theguardian: by Barbara Taylor — 

The obligations of friendship trumped madness – and this in itself could be a form of healing.

Ward 16 of Friern Barnet mental asylum was an “acute admissions” ward, meaning it was meant for people in a highly disturbed state, needing plenty of care (and drugs) until they stabilised and could be discharged or moved to a rehab or long-stay ward. In fact, some people had been living there for years. About a third of the patients were “sectioned” (legally detained), so the door was usually locked.

I entered Friern voluntarily. Theoretically I could leave at any time. Patients who were legally detained were in a very different position. One former patient I met, who had been detained in Friern many times, described receiving forcible injections that left her bruised and traumatised. Other ex-patients describe wards crackling with tension, assembly-line shock treatments, hard-ass nurses. Life on the notorious “back wards”, where elderly people with dementia and others deemed chronically ill sometimes languished for decades, could be truly horrible.

Waking up in a mental hospital isn’t something you plan for. My first morning in Friern, I surfaced on a tide of queasy amazement. There had been moments in recent months when I had hardly recognised the desolate woman inhabiting my body and brain, but sooner or later the familiar self would always reappear, sporting her labels – historian, feminist, writer. Now I was in a place that redefined me. Now I was a loony, a nutter, one of those forlorn beings who lurk in the dark recesses of our society. My me had drained out of me; I was on the far side of the moon.

More: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/02/barbara-taylor-life-in-a-mental-asylum