{"id":16829,"date":"2025-07-17T16:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/16829\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T16:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:53:07","slug":"the-sleep-room-by-jon-stock-review-the-psychiatrist-who-abused-female-patients-psychiatry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/16829\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sleep Room by Jon Stock review \u2013 the psychiatrist who abused female patients | Psychiatry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">In a hospital in Waterloo, London, in the mid-1960s was a psychiatric ward full of sleeping women. Suffering from disorders ranging from post-partum depression to chronic anxiety to anorexia, the residents of the \u201csleep room\u201d were sedated and woken only to be washed, fed or subjected to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). All were under the supervision of psychiatrist William Sargant, who at the time was hailed as a pioneer. Sargant claimed that a combination of enforced narcosis and ECT could fix disturbed minds. Failing that, the treatment would be surgical lobotomy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The Sleep Room is author Jon Stock\u2019s gripping account of a scandal in which female patients were denied dignity and agency by a man who wielded <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/mar\/29\/he-still-features-in-my-nightmares-how-a-sinister-psychiatrist-put-hundreds-of-women-in-deep-drug-induced-comas\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">absolute power over their bodies<\/a>. The book is ably narrated by actors Richard Armitage, Antonia Beamish and Celia Imrie. The latter\u2019s contributions are unusually personal since, at 14, Imrie had been hospitalised with anorexia and was put under Sargant\u2019s care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">In her remarkable and haunting testimony, Imrie remembers Sargant as \u201ctall with an evil presence\u201d. Though she doesn\u2019t believe she had electro-shock treatment, she witnessed a woman in a neighbouring bed going through it, recalling a \u201chuge rubber plug jammed between her teeth; the strange, almost silent cry, like a sigh of pain, she made as her tormented body shuddered and jerked; the scent of burning hair and flesh\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Stock\u2019s book paints a grim picture of the medical establishment\u2019s attitude to mental illness. Sargant\u2019s ward was finally closed in 1973. In the weeks before that happened, he destroyed most of the case records. He was never investigated and died in 1988 with his reputation intact.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\"> Available via Little, Brown, 11hr 48min<\/p>\n<p>Further listening<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Bookish<br \/>Lucy Mangan,Penguin Audio, 6hr 59min<br \/>The Guardian\u2019s TV critic reads her memoir in which she looks back at a life shaped by literature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">My Next Breath<br \/>Jeremy Renner, Simon &amp; Schuster Audio, 6hr 35min<br \/>The American Hustle actor\u2019s memoir recalls his accident in 2023 when he was crushed by a snow plough, leading to surgery and months of rehabilitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a hospital in Waterloo, London, in the mid-1960s was a psychiatric ward full of sleeping women. Suffering&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-16829","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-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}