It seems that Stevie Wright of the Easybeats was also subjected to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wright
As was Bobby Limb!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Limb
I am in good company then?
But they were both in Australia!!
WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS WHERE ARE ALL THOSE IN THE UK WHO SUFFERED DST WITH ME AT THAT TIME ??
GEORGENA - WHERE ARE YOU NOW ? YOU WERE 15 AT THE TIME AND ALSO HAVING DST IN THAT AWFUL HOSPITALWHERE ARE THOSE DOCTORS, NURSES AND OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS WHO OBVIOULSY THOUGHT THAN THAT DST WAS A BENEFICIAL TREATMENT TO GIVE SOMEONE, ESPECIALLY A TEENAGE GIRL? - I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THEIR VIEWS ON IT NOW AND WHAT THEY THOUGHT AT THE TIME?
I KNOW OTHERS EXIST AS WHEN I WAS BEING GIVEN IT THERE WAS AT LEAST THREE OTHERS IN THE SAME WARD OF PARK PREWITT HOSPITAL BEING GIVEN IT TOO
Where are you all?
Why do I want to know?
Well, It is not to blame anyone personally and I am not obsessive - truly I am not .
- If I had ever of dwelled on or been at all obsessed by this barbaric thing that happened to me as a teenager I would have surely tried to do something about it before
One bit of unfinished business is that I was administered something called deep Sleep Treatment by the NHS for no good reason that I can see explained then or now - why I was subjected to such total abuse!!
I just want to find out why something like this was allowed to happen in a UK hospital and why those involved did not realise how destructive it was and how it totally infringed your person and your rights as a person as well as felt like abuse when you were the person having it.
And maybe I want to find out why it does not seem to be recognized that this barbaric practice was carried out within the NHS as little back and the 1980s and I suffered it .
As I have contacted various bodies and people in the UK and most thing that while DST did happen in th UK, it ceased in he 1850s - this was what MIND said of DST:
Mind does not appear to know that Deep Sleep Treatment happened in the UK and far beyond the 1950/60s!!!!!******Hello Veritee.Thank you for your e-mail dated 19 March.
Deep sleep therapy was a 'therapy' that started at the end of the 19th century and was used in the early 20th century. Something similar has recently been suggested to help people coming off street drugs such as heroin - to sleep through cold turkey.
In 1897 sleep was induced with bromide. This is rather toxic, and they went on to use barbiturates. It was used to treat psychotic states. The idea was to induce prolonged sleep, after which people would wake up much improved.Some psychiatrists thought / found (?) that it facilitated psychotherapy.
In the 1950s someone in Canada went on to force people to listen to messages during sleep - brain-washing - to accelerate their recovery. The final stage of the history of this treatment seems to have been ECT several times a day- given during deep sleep, which also happened in Canada. You can find out a bit about this treatment in the book, A Short History of Psychiatry by Edward Shorter (1997), and possibly Roy Porter's book on the history of madness. These should be obtainable from your local library.
I probably will not succeed - is anyone interested anymore - I so doubt it!!! - but I may wish now to try
Here are some pictures of Park Prewitt asylum where I had the sleep treatment taken by urban explorers:
http://urbandesertion.squarespace.com/park-prewett/
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=17754
http://urbandesertion.squarespace.com/park-prewett/
How did I end up in a mental asylum having Deep Sleep Therapy?
I shoplifted!!
Actually by coincidence I worked at Park Prewitt when I first left school at 15/16 as an ancillary in the geriatric wards - I could write a book about this experience in itself as many in my care had been living in the hospital for 30 years or more!!!!
Some women only because they had had a baby out of 'wedlock' and had therefore been considered 'morally insane ' others because they had been abused and others because they were what would now be called 'slow learners' . Perfectly sane people but just a bit 'slow' educationally and due to this they had had to live in that awful hospital and be institutionalized most of their lives!!
But little did I know that within a matter of a few months of leaving I would also be an in-patient in that dreadful asylum...............................
- but I was made laid off - no fault of my own - really they just laid me off - and was unemployed and homeless, then I became ill and phobic , could not then work and and shoplifted to eat!!!
Yes I was caught when I shoplifted a few tiny things, as I did not live at home with my parents and with no work I lost my accommodation, I had no benefits in those days and I was hungry - but I was always rebellious and when I got to the police station I was not repentant because I had only shoplifted for food that I needed - I was homeless at the time and needed to eat. This is not an excuse it is the facts.
...................but remember - this was not 2008!!!
This was the early 1970s - young women like me were not rebellious - we did not speak back to police!! Young women in the 60s and 70s did what they were told - but I never did.
I was therefore not considered to be bad - I was considered to be mad!!
I had already had a horrendous time as a child and I was NEVER going to conform to the expectations of that day and how as a woman I SHOULD behave
I was prosecuted and put on 3 years - yes 3 years probation for shoplifting a couple of things from a food store including a small items of food so I could eat!!! and it was considered that due to my rebelliousness that women did not show then that I MUST be mentally ill
So I had to report to a psychiatrist once a month for the duration of my probation!! In the meantime I became scared and consequently really phobic - lets face it I had suffered abuse I was now on probation for nothing and trapped in the home that had lead me there
Anyway I became so phobic I rarely left my room - eventually I was carted off - under the probation order - to Park Prewitt asylum where I was given this dreadful Deep Sleep Therapy
As DST was thought in those days to 'cure ' rebellious' in young people or 'deviants' like me !! For what constituted a deviant, see book Dealing with Deviants: http://www.jstor.org/pss/589745 one of the authors Stuart Whiteley was latterly a psychiatrist at the Henderson where I went later and I was part of his study . We were NOT Deviants but young people who had mostly suffered abuse and other difficult childhoods or life experiences - Young people in any situation would NEVER be treated like this now!!!
Great to live as a experimental rat!!!!
I am now 55 and it has taken me most of my life to even accept what happened let along come to terms with it
People ask me now why I stay with a husband who gave me HIV
But compared to the rest of my life before I met him
He is the best thing that EVER happened to me!
Perhaps if you are reading this so far you will perhaps understand why?
Posts
2 comments:
Yes, I do feel sorry for your experiences with Stuart Whiteley. In psychiatric terms the man has always been a complete dinosaur and a pseudo-scientist. His influence on psychiatry has been unrelievedly malign, and thank goodness he is now too old to matter.
Yes, Thank you Justin
But I have to say that while his views were 'odd' and I have disliked what I read of his theories on us that he called 'deviants'
( actually in my experience very distressed young people who in modern terms would have at most be suffering mild BPD and probably not even this, they were just young disstressed people who self harmed as a coping mechanism, to cope with what had been for most 'significant childhood abuse').
But I only came across Stuart Whiteley when he was medical director of the Henderson Hospital.
and despite his background attitudes/theories
I can only describe the year I spend in that unit - the Henderson - a completely positive experience for me and many others I was in that Therapeutic community Unit with at the time.
Stuart Whiteley while MD of The Henderson may have had 'flawed' background theories for why we needed such intensive residential group therapy, but on the whole the Henderson was not damaging for me and most others, but very positive.
it was a completely drug free environment where the only treatment was 24/7 access to support and intensive group and individual therapy.
My stay there truly changed my life in that I was at the time approx 24 years old and I am now 57 and from the day I left the Henderson I have never had any further treatment for mental health, I have coped well with my life, made long term relationships i.e been married for over 23 years and rarely had any distress I could not mange to deal with and process myself .
while I totally agree from what I have since read abotu Stuart Whiteley's theories from his books, in fact my stay in the unit he was medical director was a positive experience.
Maybe it depends on what 'treatment' you have been forced to undertake before?
As my stay in Park Prewett where I had barbaric Deep sleep ( drug) Therapy was far more damaging and abusive.
By the time I got to the Henderson and met Stuart Whiteley I was just grateful to be in a unit that did not feed you any drugs,ave you the counseling and therapy that was actually helpful and at least in part treated you like a human being.
But yes from what I have read of his dinosaur attitudes to those with mental health issues since, I am now very surprised that Stuart Whiteley ever worked in a forward thinking Therapeutic community such as the Henderson.
Thank you Justin for your comment.
Veritee
Post a Comment