Deep Sleep Therapy

[My Good Babushka]

Dr. Harry Bailey’s experiments with electroshock therapy combined with barbiturates put psychiatric patients in a deep sleep for several days. This practice killed 26 patients in Australia’s Chelmsford Hospital between 1962 and 1979. In spite of never having been proven an effective or useful treatment, it was prescribed for ailments ranging from schizophrenia to PMS. Deep Sleep Therapy was also used in the U.S. and Great Britain. It emerged at the same time as anesthesia in surgery was being implemented, and was seen to give psychiatry an air of medical legitimacy, so for eighty years, it was never really questioned as a therapy.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. wow.

[ismnotwasm]

2. I always feel sorry for the patients when I read stuff like this

I'm sure they got the snake oil sell.