{"id":369056,"date":"2025-08-24T05:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T05:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369056\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T05:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T05:49:10","slug":"i-had-electric-shock-treatment-in-the-1960s-now-i-want-to-know-why-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369056\/","title":{"rendered":"I had electric shock treatment in the 1960s. Now I want to know why | Mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am 83<\/strong>, and my life seems <\/strong>to <\/strong>have been <\/strong>mostly happy<\/strong>. <\/strong>But a<\/strong>fter a year at art college, I\u00a0sort of disintegrated <\/strong>and was sent to a mental hospital<\/strong> after I<\/strong> <\/strong>had <\/strong>tried to kill myself several times. <\/strong>My best explanation<\/strong> <\/strong>is that <\/strong>life was too difficult and painful. But why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the hospital I had 15 electric shock treatments<\/strong>. After the first one<\/strong>\u00a0I<\/strong>\u00a0didn\u2019t recognise my mum<\/strong>. <\/strong>I\u00a0had\u00a0a\u00a0blinding headache, and the fear of never waking up was strong. <\/strong>I\u00a0was given <\/strong>antipsychotic<\/strong> drugs<\/strong> and\u00a0<\/strong>sedatives<\/strong>. <\/strong>I caused a lot of worry to my parents, but I couldn\u2019t <\/strong>\u201cpull myself together<\/strong>\u201d<\/strong>.<\/strong> Looking back, I see myself as a caring person who helped the confused and unhappy ladies who were locked away in that massive old mental hospital, where, in a way, I felt at home.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Afterwards, I decided to go to Italy, where I\u00a0recovered gradually and stopped the medication. <\/strong>I started teaching English and <\/strong>enjoy<\/strong>ed it. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Since then, I have lived a full and in many ways successful life.<\/strong> <\/strong>But the <\/strong>question is<\/strong>, what happened to me?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People make seemingly random decisions all the time, but when we\u00a0look back they had more purpose than they seemed to and were often informed by our environment. You\u00a0were courageous, and still are\u00a0for\u00a0writing to me and thinking about this difficult time in your life, which must have been traumatic. And\u00a0like all trauma, it\u2019s stuck in your\u00a0memory as snapshots, which you\u00a0are\u00a0now\u00a0trying\u00a0to make sense of.<\/p>\n

Trauma memories aren\u2019t laid down like regular memories in the brain. You can learn more about this by listening to the podcast<\/a> I did on this subject with Dr Joanne Stubley, a consultant medical psychotherapist who leads the trauma service for adults at the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust in England. I\u00a0showed her your letter and we were both curious about what led up to your breakdown. Mental health issues were not always dealt with well in the early 1960s, and the landscape back then was, as Stubley describes it: \u201cpower-based and misogynistic\u201d. Things aren\u2019t perfect now, but there\u2019s certainly more understanding.<\/p>\n

We also wondered what was happening around that time for you? What led to life being so difficult? Young people don\u2019t have breakdowns and attempt suicide in a vacuum.<\/p>\n

Even in the psychiatric hospital you were looking after others. No wonder you\u2019re now thinking, \u2018What about me?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYou showed great resilience moving to Italy,\u201d said Stubley. \u201cYou had the capacity to get yourself up and away [from a place where difficult things happened] to live a life where you were giving to others, teaching English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in the psychiatric hospital, you said you were looking after others. No wonder you\u2019re thinking, \u201cWhat about me? Who was thinking of me?\u201d It\u2019s not unusual to have these questions as we age and realise we have more years behind us than ahead. \u201cYou seem to have great courage and capacity to ask yourself these questions,\u201d said Stubley. \u201cThat sense you have of, \u2018What happened to me? What really went on here?\u2019 is impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

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One of the hallmarks of trauma is feeling alone in a situation, of being disempowered. A way to process it is to understand what happened. I wondered if you might try to find out if any of your medical notes<\/a> from this time still exist.<\/p>\n

Stubley also suggested \u201cstarting to have conversations. It doesn\u2019t have to be formal therapy. It could be with a\u00a0good friend, a counsellor, anyone who would be able to offer you the space to explore and tell your life story so you may get more of an understanding of it. Are there any relatives alive from that time who you could talk to?\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought it was interesting you made a geographical move, and to a place where English isn\u2019t routinely spoken. You really left your old self behind, but\u00a0now it\u2019s time to integrate the two. You might also find this Guardian article<\/a> interesting.<\/p>\n

Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com<\/a>. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions<\/a>. The latest series of Annalisa\u2019s podcast is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Comments on this piece are pre-moderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Please be aware that there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am 83, and my life seems to have been mostly happy. But after a year at art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-369056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115082177645500432","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}