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 “sleep room” 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.
The Sleep Room is author Jon Stock’s gripping account of a scandal in which female patients were denied dignity and agency by a man who wielded absolute power over their bodies. The book is ably narrated by actors Richard Armitage, Antonia Beamish and Celia Imrie. The latter’s contributions are unusually personal since, at 14, Imrie had been hospitalised with anorexia and was put under Sargant’s care.
