Reading a series of psychiatric papers from the 1980s. They talk about using “punishment” and aversion ‘treatment’ on people who self harm. These include electric shocks, cattle prods, face coverings, restraints, seclusion, withdrawal of food. @wendyburn @DrAdrianJames @rcpsych

They talk about how there is “little disagreement” that “punishment” is the “most effective method of reducing self injurous behaviour”. They describe in some detail the types of behavioural modification and punishment inflicted on me as a ten year old in a CAMHS ward.

I’m tagging @wendyburn @DrAdrianJames @TrudiSene1 @rcpsych @rcpsychLiaison @rcpsychGAP @RcpsychCAP is because I’m hoping this generation of psychiatric leaders are the ones who will break the silence and acknowledge some of what previous generations did in living memory was wrong

Then I’m hoping we can start having a conversation about how a lot of self harm treatment and responses that are seen now actually come from this place. It’s a place we need to acknowledge and listen to and learn from so that future generations don’t face echoes of this cruelty.

It should not take more than thirty years for psychiatry to see that this is wrong, to say it is wrong, and to find a way to acknowledge sorrow for that wrong. It shouldn’t take over thirty years for psychiatry to ask itself what remnants of this abuse remain in care today.

But we are where we are. And although it’s difficult to express sorrow as a profession for something that happened before you, there are traces of these abuses in care now. Which is why it’s so important we look back. I’m pleased courage is a value of @rcpsych. We need that now.

I cannot write this in a quiet letter to @rcpsych because I am barely coping reading this. This is the best I can do. Where psychiatry has left a person who was utterly broken by this abuse in treatment for anorexia and OCD and associated self harm 30y ago, they need to pick up.

I also spent many years thinking that I and the other children I met on those wards were the only ones who experienced this. For many years I was too frightened to talk about it publicly. I’m doing this publicly because there may be others like me who survived and need to see it.

It’s actually written down. In the professional literature. Cases are described. Real people who were abused with cattle prods and face coverings and solitary confinement and worse in the name of treatment. We don’t need to debate whether it happened. We need to say never again.

This isn’t the time for mental health professionals reading to come here saying they’ve never done this, or never seen it. Or even that I shouldn’t talk becuase it makes them uncomfortable. Professional discomfort at this is necessary. And a small ask given what patients suffered

Acknowledging this doesn’t say that the whole of psychiatry is bad. Or that everything previous generations did was wrong. But it does speak to what we will accept for the future and to those who survived this and have the courage to look to psychiatry now and wait for a response