HEALTH
A N E W I D E A ?
This is likely to be a long post, with personal and emotional stuff, so if you're not into that you probably shouldn't read this.
Mental health is something that is not always easily discussed, and not always so easily understood, particularly with neurotypicals being the ones listening. The stigma surrounding mental health issues can probably be drawn back to the creation of the Mental Asylums, and the housing, or imprisoning, of the public who were not able to be correctly treated by any doctors of the time. This led to misdiagnoses and ill-informed decisions on how patients were to be treated, there was no clarification between the mental conditions you could be suffering from, hell even homosexuality was something they considered to be treated in a Mental Asylum. Its not someplace anyone would want to be. But its where my great grandmother Clara Whitaker found herself.
And this is where I want to go with my project, I want to explore mental health and the early treatments and stigmas that still cause problems in todays society.
Clara Whitaker is the mother of my grandma, Sybil Whitaker, who is the mother of my dad. Unfortunately not much is known about Clara, as Sybil was not one to talk about her childhood, however after her passing early this year my family has found a series of letters a photos showing Sybils birth mother, Clara. Clara married Sydney Whitaker and had two children, Bryan and Sybil, she raised them in to their teenage years, and then she ended her life. No one in my family knew the reasoning for this, it was never spoken about, but in a series of letters written to my grandma Sybil, we can see that Clara was admitted to Whittingham Hospital in Preston, a Mental Asylum.
Given there is not much information in the letters, and not much is known about Clara herself, not even her maiden name, I will have to do some thorough research to find out who she was, when she was born, who her family was, and why she was in Whittingham.
Below are the letters sent the Sybil in 1952 from Clara
"This will not be wrote so well because I am writing it in bed, the doctor put me to bed yesterday for a day or two, because my legs have swollen very much since Sunday, so I did not have the Electric treatment yesterday, I was rather sorry because I want to get it finished with as I can get home for christmas, I will have been here a month next Monday."
From this letter I can see that Clara had been receiving Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), where in which electric currents are passed through the brain triggering a brief seizure. At the time is was not a well researched treatment, and showed no real signs of effectiveness, it was a horrific attempt by doctors to treat something they had no understanding of.
Also in the letter it shows that Clara was admitted in the 20th October 1952 and had been there for at least a month, I don't know how long she stayed, or if in fact she was voluntarily admitted to Whittingham, but you can see she is desperate to leave.
Above is an image of my Grandma Sybil, left, and my Grandad Philip SouthwellAfter briefly looking through the letters and photographs I'm finding myself seeing my Grandma Sybil in a different way, I was never as close with her as my sister was, but it makes me wonder if I had been closer would she have talked about it? Because even her sons know very little about Clara, but even with all this confusion and 'mystery' surrounding her, I am finding understanding. I understand better now that its quite possible that the mental struggles Clara may have had, could be similar to what I am experiencing today with my own mental health issues, that maybe its not so strange because theres a chance it runs in the family.
Above: Grandma Sybil
