Deep Sleep Therapy - Australian Chelmsford Scandal

Australian Chelmsford Scandal

Deep sleep therapy was also notoriously practised (in combination with electroconvulsive therapy and other therapies) by Harry Bailey between 1962 and 1979 in Sydney, at the Chelmsford Private Hospital. As practised by Bailey, deep sleep therapy involved long periods of barbiturate-induced unconsciousness. DST was prescribed for various conditions ranging from schizophrenia and depression to obesity, PMS and addiction.

Twenty-six patients died at Chelmsford Private Hospital during the 1960s and 1970s, with only perfunctory investigation by authorities. After the failure of the agencies of medical and criminal investigation to tackle complaints about Chelmsford, a series of articles in the early 1980s in the Sydney Morning Herald and television coverage on 60 Minutes exposed the abuses at the hospital. This forced the authorities to take action, and a Royal Commission was appointed.

In 1978 Sydney psychiatrist Brian Boettcher had convened a meeting of doctors working at Chelmsford and found there was little support for deep sleep therapy (Harry Bailey did not attend). However the treatment continued to be used into the following year. Legal action on behalf of former patients was and is still being pursued in New South Wales.

In her book First Half, Toni Lamond described what it was like when she was admitted there in 1970. She had an addiction to prescription drugs and a friend told her about Dr Bailey who duly became her psychiatrist.

I was given a semi private room. On the way to it I saw several beds along the corridors with sleeping patients. The patient in the other bed in my room was also asleep. I thought nothing of it at the time. Although it was mid morning, the stillness was eerie for a hospital that looked to be full to overflowing. I was given a handful of pills to take and the next thing I remember was Dr Bailey standing by the bed asking how I felt. I told him I'd had a good night's sleep. He laughed and informed me it was ten days' later and what's more he had taken some weight off me. I was checked out of the hospital and this time noticed the other patients were still asleep or being taken to the bathroom while out on their feet.

The New South Wales government recently admitted that three people over the last three years had been kept continuously unconscious for 48 hours whilst undergoing ECT.