Last weekend one of the local Scottish papers had a first page (ie cover page) article on the first face transplant in UK history. Quite sensibly it pointed out how this procedure had the potential to benefit those whose face has been severely disfigured due to accident or illness. It also indicated that there remain serious problems such as patients rejecting the graft. No doubt this procedure will benefit only a very small number of patients in the country.
The to my mind much bigger story, affecting the much large numbers of clinically depressed Scots, was that psychotherapy is not available to many (most?) Scots suffering from clinical depressions. Surely the overall amount of suffering this omission to provide proper psychotherapy causes (simply by way of looking at the number of people affected) is very much higher than the amount of suffering alleviated by face transplants. So, here is my question: why wasn't the issue of depression and lack of services flagged by the paper? The newspaper in question relegated this issue to a smallish news item inside the paper.
