Community living
Wednesday, 7th January 2009
Kate Chisholm reviews recents radio broadcasts
This was the first of five programmes investigating the changes in the way those who are mentally ill have been treated. Not in itself an unusual topic for Radio Four, but the team behind it (led by producer Marya Burgess) have asked listeners who were either patients in an institution or a member of staff to send in their recollections. They were inundated. One very elderly psychiatrist regretted having been ‘taken in’ by the enthusiastic supporters of lobotomy as a valid treatment option. ‘Like the emperor’s new clothes,’ he muttered, having performed 17 such operations. But it was the patients I wanted to hear from. Very few of them had been given any kind of psychotherapy; most had experienced heavy-duty drug regimes (insulin was used in high quantities to induce coma) or even electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as memorably inflicted on Jack Nicholson in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What’s so surprising is that it is still being used, and not just as a last resort. We need to know why.
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