A NOTE ON 1960s PSYCHIATRIC CARE

In 1960s Australia, it had only been a matter of years since the practice of lobotomising patients had fallen out of favour. For some time afterwards, treatments administered to people suffering from mental health problems continued to reflect a heavy-handed approach. Experimental methods were used with little accountability on the part of the doctors involved for deaths that occurred or adverse consequences of treatments.

One example of a tragic failure of the Australian psychiatric system during the 1960s and ’70s occurred at the Chelmsford Private Hospital in Sydney. Between 1963 and 1979, twenty-four people died as a direct result of Deep Sleep Therapy (DST) administered at that hospital, and at least another twenty-two people committed suicide within twelve months of their treatment (New South Wales, Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy, Report (1988), vol. 4, 25, 37). DST is a procedure in which intravenous sedative and anti-psychotic drugs are given to patients to keep them in comatose or semi-comatose states for up to several weeks at a time (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, ‘Position Statement 34: Deep Sleep Therapy,’ 2009, http://www.ranzcp.org/Files/ranzcp-attachments/Resources/College_Statements/Position_Statements/ps34-pdf.aspx (accessed December 21, 2012)). Doctors administer ECT while the patients are in the induced coma. DST was practised for seventeen years at the Chelmsford Private Hospital primarily by the psychiatrists Dr Harry Bailey and Dr John Herron, but other doctors were also involved (Ibid.).

The condition of patients undergoing this treatment should have been cause for alarm, if not urgent and immediate action. But over that whole period of time, no doctor involved in administering the therapy made a complaint. According to the Report of the 1988 Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy:

large numbers of patients were treated for complications, these being mainly infections, pneumonia and deep vein thrombosis … There was incontinence of urine and faeces and impaction and retention. There were restraints used to prevent falling from the bed, fractures and falls, vomiting, skin breakdown and metabolism imbalance. At the end of the treatment there were gross visual distortions and hallucinations and severe weakness. (New South Wales, Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy, Report (1988), vol. 4, 25, 37.)

Only one medical professional, a nurse, made a complaint over a period of seventeen years. The nurse’s complaint was made in 1970 to the Health and Public Service Board. It elicited a warning to Dr Herron, but no other action was taken. There was no serious investigation until 1985, followed by the New South Wales Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy (1988–1990).

As a result of its investigations, the Commission referred three doctors to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Dr Harry Bailey had committed suicide, but the other doctors fought the case in the High Court, which ultimately granted a permanent stay of disciplinary proceedings brought against them. In response to this ruling, the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped all charges (Inside 60 Minutes: The Story Behind the Stories (St Leonards, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 42).

Julianne Gilroy did not die from DST. The connection is that her death occurred in Sydney at the same time that patients were dying at the Chelmsford Private Hospital in the same city. At this time (1963–1979), the circumstances surrounding conditions at Chelmsford suggest that a culture contaminated by hubris and incompetence developed unchecked within the psychiatric profession within New South Wales due to systemic failures within government and professional regulatory bodies.

Despite the inquiry into Julianne Gilroy’s death, questions about her treatment and death have not been answered. It appears that no one was made accountable for her death. And the practices at the hospital where she died do not seem to have been subject to any official scrutiny.