‘He still features in my nightmares’: how a sinister psychiatrist put hundreds of women in deep, drug-induced comas

The Guardian ^ | Mar 29, 2025 | Jon Stock

[ransomnote]

In the 1960s, William Sargant used a combination of narcosis and ECT to ‘reprogram’ troubled young women. Now his patients, including the actor Celia Imrie and the former model Linda Keith, are trying to piece together what happened

SNIP

Every day, thousands of commuters and tourists pass beneath the former hospital. Some might look up to admire the terracotta facade, with its ornate colonnades and glazed tile lettering, but few are aware of the medical horrors that took place in one small room on the top floor: the Sleep Room. It was here, on ward five, that female patients – they were almost always women – were put to sleep for three to four months (in one case, five), only roused from their beds to be fed, washed and given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): a shock of up to 110 volts that passed bilaterally through the temporal lobe of the brain, triggering a grand mal seizure.

SNIP

The Royal Waterloo became part of its more famous neighbour, St Thomas’ hospital, in 1948, the year the National Health Service was formed. It was an important year for William Sargant, too. An ambitious 41-year-old doctor, Sargant was appointed the physician in charge of the department of psychological medicine at St Thomas’, one of the world’s most prestigious teaching hospitals. It wasn’t long before ward five, a psychiatric unit for inpatients, was being referred to as the William Sargant ward. It was Sargant’s personal fiefdom, a place  where he could pursue, unchecked, his own mechanistic approach to psychiatry: the brain, like any other organ or limb, was best fixed with physical treatments, he believed. If it was damaged, it first needed to be “splinted”.

[ransomnote]

This article is enough to make Fauci sigh, "I couldha been a contendha."

[Seruzawa]

Atrocities like this are the norm in psychiatry. Using drugs, pain and hypnosis the shrinks program people into soulless killers. You may have noticed that all school and workplace and mass shooters are on psych drugs. This is not side effects. It’s what psych treatments do.

[kawhill]

“If it was damaged, it first needed to be “splinted”. A splinted brain, Dr.?

[joe fonebone]

Psycotrophic drugs....
The one thing all these mass shootings have in common..

[Brian Griffin]

“female patients – they were almost always women – were put to sleep for three to four months (in one case, five), only roused from their beds to be fed, washed and given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): a shock of up to 110 volts that passed bilaterally through the temporal lobe of the brain, triggering a grand mal seizure”

I would assume that friends and family would have noticed their prolonged absence.

Would you not visit your mom, daughter or spouse for months on end?

[hinckley buzzard]

In the 1940s and 50s, coma therapy and electroconvulsive therapy were accepted techniques in psychiatry. There were no real psychoactive medications, other than uppers and downers, until the mid1950s when Thorazine made its debut. This Sargent fellow sounds like he went off the rails with these somatic treatments, but he would have been able to say he was acting generally within accepted practice.

[cowboyusa]

I think there was a movie about this.

[Seruzawa]

The psychs lie and say that the “treatment” requires isolation from the family.

[popdonnelly]

This is tragic, absolutely tragic.

[Nifster]

A great majority

These are already truly sick people would have happened anyway

[Varsity Flight]

Francis Farmer

[Varsity Flight]

Movie title:

Frances

[cowboyusa]

Coma