Inside The Mental
Silence, Stigma, Psychiatry, and LSD
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Before she became a psychiatric nurse at "The Mental" in the 1950s, Kay Parley was a patient there, as were the father she barely remembered and the grandfather she'd never met. Part memoir, part history, and beautifully written, Inside The Mental offers an episodic journey into the stigma, horror, and redemption that she found within the institution's walls.
Now in her nineties, Parley looks back at the emerging use of group therapy, the advent of patients' rights, evolving ethics in psychiatry, and the amazing cast of characters she met there.
She also reveals her role in groundbreaking experiments with LSD, pioneered by the world's leading researchers at "The Mental" to treat addiction and mental illness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this memoir Parley (They Cast a Long Shadow) writes of her experiences as a patient, and later a staff member, at the Saskatchewan Hospital at Weyburn from the late 1940s to the 1960s. Her time there is personally formative, as her fellow patients include her father and grandfather. The staff eventually includes Francis Huxley (nephew of Aldous), who introduces Parley to LSD. She places the hospital in historical context and attributes the comparably greater sense of community among the patients and staff to the more collaborative environment of the times. Parley effectively describes the hospital's attempts to experiment with LSD as a legitimate and seemingly promising therapeutic tool, prior to psychiatry being forced to abandon the drug due to its increasingly negative public image. Even without that concern, clinics probably could not have afforded to continue treating patients with whole days of supervised exploratory LSD trips. Those with long histories of mental illness who have worked hard to integrate it into their lives will find Parley's story relatable. For others with historical interests, the book offers a vivid glimpse into psychiatry's past.
