Behind hospital doors

Helen Joyce recounts the Kafkaesque story of how she was secretly logged on police records as a criminal

On the top floor of a London hospital, shrouded in darkness, a famous psychiatrist’s controversial treatment programme filled a ward with sleeping patients, many doped into unconsciousness without their consent – and it was perfectly legal in the 1960s and 1970s.

This World Mental Health Day (10 October), take a moment to reflect on the experiences of our ancestors who were mentally ill. How were they looked after, and where? Before the mid-18th century, the U

I cared for all my patients but one stood out…

I thought I’d never tell a soul what happened in that graveyard

At the foot of the stairs up to the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, south London, are two massive writhing naked male figures by 17th-century sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, known as Raving Ma