“I (had) to see it from both sides.”

July 23, 2016 9:52 PM

Kay Parley, a 93-year-old psychiatric nurse and former psychiatric patient, reflects on her experiences — from institutionalization, through experimental psychedelic treatments and the advent of group therapy, to the medical model — in interviews with the CBC (~24 minutes; transcript included) and the Regina Leader Post.

Her memoir, Inside "The Mental": From Psychiatric Survivor to LSD Researcher, was released this spring.

posted by cotton dress sock (5 comments total)

“Drugs have become a means of bypassing the time-consuming and expensive therapies we used to use,” Parley writes.

That's an interesting perspective. I'm sure there are a lot of things lost when institutionalization was removed from the equation, but spending weeks, months, years with patients most likely had a lot of positive effects as well.
posted by xingcat at 6:08 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think long term institutionalization is needed but I'm not sure how long is a good option.

I have spent some time in various institutionalized settings , and there is such contrast between them, the amount of money they cost and the types of treatment they offer.

I'm glad she is writing about her experiences and how she recieved quality care.

I just wish that every place had been like that then, and places people go now are like that.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:52 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't have any personal experience with inpatient psychiatric care. My mother, however, is a psych nurse who has worked in various in- and outpatient hospital wards. She has never outright stated a desire to try psychotropic drugs illegally, but I get the impression that she would jump on an opportunity to do so legally to better understand her patients. Having some experience with hallucinogenic drugs I'm firmly in the camp that while it might not bring life shattering insight to everyone, it should be incredibly beneficial for dealing with people that for whatever reason have a hard time determining what is real and what is not.
posted by delegeferenda at 12:27 PM on July 24, 2016

It must have contributed to her experience that the hospital was in her home town, she was actually reunited with her father there (and a grandparent?!?) and she saw that her father had been able to pop in and out of an inpatient situation inbetween leading a pretty good life on the outside.

Because the way she tells it, about patients having to sleep in the hallways, she makes it sound like it was quite OK like having a sleepover at your cousin's house where you're fine on a mattress on the floor.

But a community depends on the attitude of everyone in it, and if that's how she saw it, and if everyone who was capable was given their part to do in running the community, and if the SAME hospital took her back as a nurse later on... well, all that sounds like a good rational setup. Certainly better than a hospital where you're sick and only sick and not allowed to lift a finger until you're "better" enough to go outside, even though you must be totally out of practice by then.
posted by tel3path at 3:17 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

That reminds me of a news piece I saw many years ago about a home for the intellectually disabled in an Eastern Bloc country where there was upheaval and the staff had fled.

The place was running completely smoothly in the absence of any supervision, because the residents just went on with their daily routines. They had been trained to be their own domestic and kitchen staff, and trained well. One assumes they either had been trained to order supplies or else the suppliers kept on delivering on schedule.
posted by tel3path at 6:41 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]