On the edge: ward-rounds in a South African psychiatric emergency department

Psychiatry, like other institutions in South Africa, is affected by issues of race. An examination of ward-rounds in a South African psychiatric emergency department, however, revealed that as important to an understanding of this unit is the recognition of the place of psychiatry in biomedicine. A key feature affecting staff in the unit was the fact of psychiatry's marginality relative to general medicine. Race was seldom and obliquely discussed, but played an important contributory role. Work towards the transformation of psychiatric care in a democratic South Africa must consider the institutional level as well as the more obvious question of racial inequality.