My grandmother was a patient there in the early 1960s. She had what we now call Alzeimers. I remember going to visit her every Sunday afternoon. (I was 12 years at the time). The grounds were lovely, I remember a cricket pitch out the front but that was where the loveliness ended. My grandmother was on an upper floor which was accessed by cold concrete stairs. A smell of urine was everywhere. There were two very large rooms, a room for day and one for sleeping. There was no comfortable seating just chairs and tables. In the dormitory the beds were close together with no privacy.
As a teenager I wasn't told much about the treatment but I remember one friend of my mother who was a patient at the same time being put into an enforced sleep for two weeks and also electric shock treatment to treat her depression.
Thank goodness we now treat our mental health patients with more understanding. Although in the light of recent news maybe we don't.
Thornwood
