Anyone else used to work in an Asylum?

[zoltan]

I assume that this is the right place to post this.

In the early 80s, as a student I worked in a psychiatric hospital, as a nursing assistant looking after geriatric men. They were only mild cases but in those days if family would not look after them they were sent to a mental home. We had some people in there who had been diagnosed as mentally ill as young men, but had problems in making themselves understood and decades later were institutionalised. Similarly single mothers had been thrown in there fifty years earlier.

The gave ECT, not sure about labotomies. It smelt of disinfectant, which seeped into your clothes and hair (and in those days I thought nothing of going for a drink straight after work on a Friday - pooh).

The permanent staff were actually more crazy than the inmates.

But it was in absolutely gorgeous grounds; the Victorians being big on this as part of the therapy. I'm sure that somewhere there was still a sign saying that it was an asylum. And there were stories that padded cells were still there.

I've spoken to medical staff in more recent years, since care in the community, and relatively small psychiatric facilities, compaing my experiences with one flew over a cuckoo's nest. And they think I was making it up.

Anyone else with memories?

[CaptainCarCrash]

They no longer administer electric shocks or lobotomies. A friend of mine who is an alcaholic went to a mental hospital to get off the drink, not sure exactly why, some sort of programme I suppose. While he was there he saw a man who had cut his own throat, a bit drastic agreed but I suppose if you are as mad as a hatter.

[Trawlerman]

A work colleague of mine had ECT in the mid 1980s...For depression.
[Not very nice...But she said it helped...]

[zoltan]

A survey of ECT use in 1980 found that more than half of ECT clinics failed to meet minimum standards set by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, with a later survey in 1998 finding that minimum standards were largely adhered to, but that two-thirds of clinics still fell short of current guidelines, particularly in the training and supervision of junior doctors involved in the procedure.[80] A voluntary accreditation scheme, ECTAS, was set up in 2004 by the Royal College, but as of 2006 only a minority of ECT clinics in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have signed up.

(from wiki - clearly suggest ECT is still practiced)