Without research psychiatry is brain dead! Perhaps the most significant discriminator between medical practice and the ‘alternative therapies’ is the responsibility, often honoured, of the medical profession to evaluate and hence vindicate its treatment methods. For the individual practitioner, research helps to maintain the highest standards of involvement in clinical care. In psychiatry many new methods of treatment and innovatory types of treatment service have been introduced over recent years. Their continued and extended use should not be justified by the zeal of their advocates but by demonstration of their efficacy.