Deborah Tallis:
Ten years ago I cracked up big time. I went to my GP [General Practitioner = doctor] because I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t cope and I couldn’t concentrate and he kept saying “Oh, well, you’re tired, you’re doing a lot, go away”. And this carried on for a while and then eventually he said, would I go and see a psychiatrist? And I said “Yes”, you know because I was so desperate to sort out what was going on in my head. So I went to see a psychiatrist who said I was depressed and would I go into a hospital for a few weeks? So I said “Yes”, thinking well, they’ll be able to help me and sort me through this because I didn’t know quite what was going on. 

I went in initially for 3 weeks as a voluntary patient and discharged myself the next day because I couldn’t cope being in hospital. I couldn’t believe it. It was like “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”. I mean people queue up for their medications and I was standing there thinking “What is going on here? I shouldn’t be here, I mean, I’m not mad (although I probably was…)”. 

So I discharged myself. I overdosed and this began a vicious cycle really. I couldn’t cope at home, I couldn’t cope in hospital and eventually I was going back and forward to the general hospital for the overdosis and then they took me back to the psychiatric hospital and then they sectioned me. And that was the start of an eight month detention, really. I was sectioned for 8 months. 

And then I got out for 6 months and then I was in for 3 and a quarter years. So altogether I was in for 4 years under section and 14 months of which was in a secure unit. The absolute hell of it was the way they treated me. I use to… Just because I was depressed, it didn’t mean to say that I couldn’t ask questions. And I used to question everything they did or said and the staff didn’t like that and I think I was known as a troublemaker. They also didn’t like me sought of suggesting that what they were doing wasn’t quite right, because they were bullies with some of the other patients and I was sort of almost outcast, I felt, by staff. 

One instance I will give as an example: I had overdosed and came out of the general hospital and was returned to the psychiatric unit and the staff shut me in a room and I was so distressed. I felt mentally and physically unwell because of what I had taken. And they wouldn’t talk to me, the consultant had told them not to talk to me. I wasn’t allowed to talk to patients, to my friends, even though my friends had tried to visit me. And I was incarcerated in that room for 2 days and I ended up rocking myself for comfort because I was so distressed. They wouldn’t give me any medication to help me calm down or sleep and it was absolute hell. And that was just one instant.

Another instant was: I was shut in a padded cell. I kept absconding. I was known to be difficult in that I was running away all the time and I used to be picked up in a police van and taken back. I was carried by the staff and injected in the buttocks. And that was just in the acute psychiatric ring. 

Eventually my label changed and I was then labeled as “borderline personality disorder”, I think because of the absconding and the overdosing. And even after that time, you know, I had been in there so long, I thought they would have known that hospitalisation wasn’t working for me. But however they thought they’d send me somewhere else, so they sent me to [a] secure hospital, which is a forensic one. 

I was under forensic psychiatrists there. I had never committed an offence and I was in there… I had to share a ward – I say a “ward”, it sounds quite nice, really, but a place – with 35 other people, several of who were murderers and a lot of the men had committed violent acts and sexual abuse and very nasty things. Most of the women were known as self-harmers, as I was because of the overdosing although I do consider that overdosing is different from self-harm. But again, that’s an opinion.

I don’t know what else to say really, except that it was absolute hell. I…

George Alexander:
Could you clarify for us, by way of what else to say, which of these times you were there volitionally, that is you decided that you wanted to be hospitalized and which of the times you were…

Deborah Tallis:
The first day.

G.A.:
The first day.

D. T.:
Yes.

G.A.:
So when you talked about a three week period, the rest of that period was all…

D. T.:
Well I discharged myself the next day.

G.A.:
And didn’t get out for…

D. T.:
I went home and overdosed. It just… I didn’t know how to cope, I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t cope at home, I couldn’t cope in the hospital. 

G.A.:
So after that day, every time that you have described has been time that you have spent involuntarily?

D. T.:
Yes.

Kate Millett:
Could you explain “sectioning” because not everybody understands that term, which is a British one.

D. T.:
Yes, sectioning means that you’re detained under the mental health act, so it’s an involuntary admission. It’s not voluntary, I did not choose to go, I was forced to stay there. Just to make that clear. 

K. M.:
Is one sectioned for a period of time?

D. T.:
I was on the section 3, which is for 6 months. So it’s renewed every 6 months and then after a few of those, it’s renewed for a year, on a yearly basis.

In the secure hospital… I felt it was very unfair that I had been sent there because I hadn’t committed any offence, I couldn’t really understand why I was and then that’s when I learned about personality disorders, because I didn’t even understand what that was. 

K. M.:
Could you explain what the “secure” hospital means. “Secure” is such a tricky term. 
D. T.:
Sorry, it’s a forensic hospital. I was in a medium secure hospital and the next stage up is “high secure” like Ramps and Broadmoore and those hospitals. 

K. M.:
In what whey are they secure, like how many locks and bars?

D. T.:
It’s like a prison, you’re locked in, you can’t get out, you’re locked in. 

K. M.:
You’re locked in the other one too, aren’t you?

D. T.:
No, because the doors would open and the doors weren’t locked in the acute psychiatric hospital but I was “specialled”, which means I was one to one with the nurse all the time so I couldn’t leave because I had a nurse with me all the time. 

Aron Harel:
Who makes the decision concerning the section? You said that it is renewed every 6 months. Are you in front of a psychiatric committee, a legal committee?

D. T.:
You have a tribunal: a psychiatrist, a lay person and a legal person. 

K. M.:
Do you know these people? Have you met them or just that day?

D. T.:
You meet psychiatrists before you go in.

K. M.:
How about the legal person?

D. T.:
No. 

K. M.:
A stranger, in other words?

D. T.:
Right.

K. M.:
And they’re supposed to defend your rights and they don’t even know you.

D. T.:
No, they’re supposed to decide whether to renew your section.

K. M.:
Oh, I see. Lawyers are supposed to defend rights, I thought.

Aron Harel:
Did you have somebody representing you in front of the tribunal?

D. T.:
My dad.

Alon Harel:
Your dad was representing you?

D. T.:
Well, my dad was with me. But I think he was in a dilemma, because he felt that if I was let out, I would kill myself and although he supported me, it was the wrong place to be. He really didn’t know what to do, so he was just with me for comfort really,

Alon Harel:
How long did the procedure take? How long were you in front of the tribunal? 

D. T.:
About half an hour.

Alon Harel:
And what kind of questions did they ask you? 

D. T.:
What would I do if I was let out and things like that. I wasn’t very well for a long time and I did say some very silly things. I wasn’t very inciteful.

Alon Harel:
Can you tell us what you said, if this is not too personal?

D. T.:
It’s not personal but it maybe you’d say that I should have been there. That’s the problem because I do remember, you know, I can see it now in hindsight but at the time I really did think that they knew what I was thinking and that I had to die and that they knew that and they said: “Well, what will you do if we let you out?” and I said: “Well, I’ll kill myself”, because I thought they would understand that that is what I had to do and of course they didn’t and I was quite upset that they didn’t. I can laugh at it now, but…

Alon Harel:
Did you think, that if you were allowed out, you’d kill yourself at the time?

D. T.:
I would have done, yes. But then it wasn’t the right place for me to be. I don’t think… The hospital certainly wasn’t the right place. I was abused, I was held down many times, I was given a lot of medication to just “dope me up”.

K. M.:
At the moment when you met the tribunal, were you straight and sober or had you been drugged? 

D. T.:
I was probably on some form of medication.

K. M.:
An interesting way to face trial. And do you discern a difference between being in a crisis, a personal crisis, even an existential crisis, where you’re not sure you want to live the life you see ahead of you, it being, you assumed to be so miserable.

D. T.:
No, I was always in a crisis, I was very depressed. That was the only time I wanted to kill myself. 

K. M.:
That is what I was trying to explain. But do you see a difference between that kind of life crisis and being mentally diseased? 

D. T.:
Can you define it?

K. M.:
I’d try to. One is to be a misery and the other one is an imaginary illness, probably.

D. T.:
Well, how would you define mine, then?

K. M.:
Well, I’ve certainly been in your position of being miserable…

D. T.:
But it wasn’t misery. I wouldn’t say that how I felt was “misery”, it was beyond misery. 

K. M.:
Ok, beyond misery. But…

D. T.:
It was like in a black hole and I couldn’t get out. But I still don’t think that 4 years incarceration was the right way to deal with that. 

K. M.:
And the assumption that you were sick, like had a disease they could cure with their methods, that seems to me not provable but I certainly know about misery and beyond misery. 

D. T.:
I’d like to also say that I had ECT. I had two lots of six treatments - when I say “treatment” like that – of ECT and I did give informed consent. But I’d also like to argue that I don’t think that anyone can give informed consent in such a distressed state. I would have done anything to have made myself feel better or feel different from how I was feeling. So I think it is arguable about informed consent in such positions. And also I’d like to argue the point about diagnosis because we all know that psychiatry has no scientific ways, no chemical ways to do blood tests or whatever to diagnose a psychiatric illness – what they call a “psychiatric illness”. 

And then I was labeled with a borderline personality disorder. I have tried to debate this with psychiatrists who gave me this label and he won’t discuss it with me even though I don’t fit the criteria and he just said it was an arbitrary decision, which I don’t think is fair at all and I do think that this is against my human rights, that I can’t even get rid of this label now and I think this should be discussed: the whole issue of diagnosing and how you can move on, because you can’t with such a label. And that’s why I was sent to this cure unit. 

Esther Herzog:
I understand that your father supported you and he was with you all along. I was wondering if he didn’t try to get you out and he didn’t try to get to the media to expose the whole story. And didn’t your family and your relatives try get you out…

D. T.:
They did towards the end but I think they truly believed that it would help me. Initially they thought that I would be helped and that they were told by the services. They were shown around the secure hospital and they were shown all the therapies offered and everything but all I saw was drama therapy. I was offered drama therapy and was told to play with a doll and I thought: “Well, who should be in therapy here?”, you know. And then I didn’t go there and that was written in my notes as sabotaging the therapy because I wouldn’t go back. 

And there are lots of things like that. I have looked at my notes and there is a lot of misinterpretation of what I’ve said. Again which I have responded to. I’ve written things in my notes but nobody reads them so…

K.M.:
You got to read the notes written about you by the doctors? 

D. T.:
Yes.

K.M.:
How did you manage that?

D. T.:
I asked. We are allowed to read the notes but it is up to the psychiatrist’s discretion. But I was allowed and I just found it very upsetting because the person they were writing about I didn’t consider was myself.

E.H.:
So at what point did your relatives do something about it?

D. T.:
I was strangled. When I was in the secure hospital I was strangled by another patient and I think this actually shook me into a reality situation and I thought: “What am I doing here?”. Then I learned to play the game. I said what the psychiatrists wanted to hear and eventually I got out. I was taken of my section and as soon as I was, I left. But my family did help me with that. So really it saved my life.

K.M.:
Did you ever think at any time to have your relatives call an attorney?

D. T.:
I did see a solicitor quite often for the tribunals but I think it is…

K.M.:
Was this person a solicitor you had hired? 

D. T.:
Yes.

K.M.:
So actually in some of the tribunals you were in fact legally represented?

D. T.:
Yes, you’re always legally represented by somebody that you could choose.

K.M.:
You can choose?

D. T.:
Yes, but it’s a psychiatrist who made the decision that you’re not going to get off your section – you very rarely do. I don’t know of anybody that has got off a section.

K.M.:
…its useless to have a lawyer then.

George Alexander:
May I ask a bit about how the lawyers behaved? Did you feel that they aggressively pressed a case for your release? 

D. T.:
No, I wouldn’t say it was aggressive. I don’t think there’s a lot they can say because you also have another report from another psychiatrist who comes in to give you an assessment. But I don’t think that is impartial. I just feel that once you’ve got…

George Alexander:
Right, you’ve got an assessment that is already against your release and you have a lawyer whose job in theory is to press the alternative case for your release. Do you feel that the lawyer was doing the best that he or she could?

D. T.:
I think so, under the circumstances.

G. A.:
You just think it’s hopeless?

D. T.:
Well, yes I do. I think the whole thing is hopeless – I think it’s all bureaucracy, it’s all playing games. You know, you have a tribunal, you go in, you’re represented by a lawyer/solicitor. You’re also given an assessment by another psychiatrist […] clinical psychologist, who is meant to be working for you but when they’ve read your notes in the hospital, they’re vey biased, or I feel they’re very biased.

G. A.:
What I was really doing, was following that up. In my experience, occasionally lawyers assigned in these cases take the same position as the clinicians. But their first job is to decide whether you should get out. And if they decide that you shouldn’t get out, then they simply walk through their role…

D. T.:
Well I think they do, because they have to. But they have to be seen to be doing, don’t they because it’s a legal right that you have a solicitor and you have another assessment.

G. A.:
If a criminal lawyer did that, he’d lose his licence.

D. T.:
Well they’re not criminal lawyers, are they?

K.M.:
Yes, but the results are even worse.

?:
I just wanted to interject very quickly. I think it is good that you did not communicate the salutary effect of the strangling because that could have become a new therapy.

K.M.:
You might never get out!

Esther Herzog:
I am still wondering about your kind of personal struggle. I mean, you came out after such a trauma and awful experience. Didn’t you take it as a personal struggle to bring it out, to fight for change or anything. 

D.T.:
I have been, I have been trying. I am taking legal action against the hospital for negligence. I am trying to bring awareness about diagnoses. I’m finding it very hard. It’s taken me 5 years to get here and I’m getting there. I’m not quite there but I’m getting there. 

Esther Herzog:
Do you get the media on your side? Do they publish things?

D. T.:
Yes, I have had a few articles written about hospitalization.

Ron Leifer:
In your 4 years in the hospital, did any sympathetic person, psychiatrist or anyone else sit down with you and talk with you about your feelings and your life and why you were feeling suicidal? 

D. T.:
No, they didn’t have the time. There were a few nursing staff, especially the night staff. I used to stay up quite a lot at night because it was the only time you had to talk to people. Just to talk about normal things, ….. normally. You know, about life outside, what’s going on… Just to have a converstation. So the night staff were quite good, really and there were a few that were very kind to me but it wasn’t psychiatrists unfortunately.

Alon Harel:
I have a few questions. You mentioned that you read the doctor’s notes and you found them to be really alien to you and you didn’t find them to reflect who you are. Could you tell us more about it, could you tell us in what ways you think you were misinterpreted, could you tell us whether there were factual lies or mistakes or whether it’s a matter of interpretation.

D. T.:
No, I’ll give you and example then: about 4 months after I came out of hospital, I made an appointment to see the consultant that had labeled me as having a personality disorder and I said I wanted to discuss the diagnosis with him so he was aware of why I was going. I took someone with me as an advocat or just somebody else to listen, really. I took a tape recorder and I asked him if I could tape the conversation because I usually get into a bit of a state and I just wanted to make sure that I heard what he was saying properly and he became very defensive and he said: no, I couldn’t. Then he wrote to my GP [General Practitioner] and the letter he wrote he said: “Deborah demanded to tape the conversation!” and he put in brackets: “and she didn’t even have a tape recorder.” I mean, just all these insinuations, which is a lie; I did have a tape recorder. I didn’t “demand”, I did ask him. And you know, its just all these little words that they use, these “power words” to make out that I am the one causing trouble, really. 

A. H.:
So is it fair to say that the interpretation was taking things that you ask and insinuating them or exagerating them, like in this case it would be the difference between “ask” and “demand”, I guess?

K. M.:
… take the ... than none at all, that’s factual!

D. T.:
I think a lot of psychiatric notes are fictitional because they try to fit me into this diagnosis and they actually got all my notes. I was in a different area, in my 20’s. And they got all my medical notes from there. I didn’t see a psychiatrist there so they were all medical notes. And I am a diabetic so I was in a hospital quite a few times for …. and they actually put them down as overdoses. So they’re saying I’ve been overdosing for years, which wasn’t true. 

A. H.:
Does your legal advisor, your solicitor have a legal right to see the notes written on you by the psychiatrist? 

D. T.:
Yes, but that has nothing to do with the case I’m doing now. It’s only to do with strangulation. 

A. H.:
And your solicitor excercised your right? Your solicitor looked at the notes? Do you know?

D. T.:
I think so. I think they have got the notes. 

Richard Vatz:
Have you ever read the article “On being seen in insane places” by … Rosenhahn?

D. T.:
Yes. I felt just like that. Although I don’t think I was all the time well but that is how I felt. 

R. V.:
And the interesting thing to me there is that that recounts situations in which well-intentioned staff misinterpret everything to be consistent with the theory that they have come into effect. I mean, obviously you can have badly motivated psychiatrists and you can have well motivated psychiatrists but the rhetoric becomes consistent with the pre-established labels that they have. 

D. T.:
They pathologize every behavior and that’s what happened, I feel, in my case. You know, I used to run away a lot but that was seen as abnormal but actually I consider that to be a very normal thing under those circumstances. 

George Alexander:
One of the interesting parallels between that study and your testimony is that Dr. Rosenhahns students, who were pretending to be patients, were taking extensive notes, rather like the tape recorder and I can just see it going down in your notes as “note-taking behavior”. 

R. V.:
Yeah, that’s what happened, yeah. 

Ron Leifer:
I think you understand psychiatry much better than they understood you.

D. T.:
I certainly do now. 

Esther Hertzog:
Well, I was wondering: When your psychiatrist was having your assessment, could you tell us about the conversation that you were having with him? 

D. T.:
I have had several assessments. I can give you an example of an early assessment I had when I first went into the forensic hospital. A psychiatrist came from Cambridge and I really felt that he would be on my side – how silly I was. But I really saw …. and I told him everything and I was honest. And again, I just feel that he misinterpreted everything I said, making it into a disease, a personality disorder. So, you know, I just couldn’t win, whatever I did, I couldn’t win and it just took being strangled to start playing the game. And it is a game and it’s wrong, in my opinion. 

Kate Millett:
Previously, I asked you questions to try to outline the difference between “distress” and “disease”, which are confused, it seems. But your present solicitor, is this solicitor helping you to sue the hospital?

D. T.:
Yes.

K. M.:
So he stands to gain as well?

D. T.:
Yes.

K. M.:
He does it for part of whatever you win. So are you happy with this solicitor? He's probably a little more .... than the other ones.

D. T.:
I am actually, in that he knows nothing about mental health and he seems "on the ball" with the law. So yes, I am happy with him. And yes, I feel I need to do it out of principle. Because I probably... I might not win. But that doesn't matter, I need to do it out of principle because they were wrong. They were wrong in what happened to me. And everybody else, a lot of the people I was in with 5 years ago are still there. And they haven't moved on. And I think that is just fundamentally wrong.

[From the audience:]

Joseph Perlstein:
[I am a] dissident from Israel. Two rhetorical questions about the grey zone of the sufferer life. Why, in the atmosphere now, when you are all sane or mad, why isn't any social organ, social factor, like the church to put some goodwill upon these people and let us, at least the church, acting in the name of the religion of God, to take some responsibility of these people for good when 	families are so perplexed, yes? These people will have some place to run and to get some warm "attenders".

Secondly, about the law: I know the law to treat the mentally ill people in Israel. It's a Nurenberger law, a law against men as being men, as human beings. And the matter is:
Why does a law about treating people like us, when a solicitor is acting not as the psychiatrists wish but as the law is ordering him? Why is a law taken and we are not taking part by appearing in the parliament? Nobody recognizes us people with wisdom, who could be counseled before such laws are taken. And why are laws against suffering people always contain paragraphs like "binding"; like "arresting"; like "attending to them as criminals, as something only to harm". Why isn't there anybody to understand that we are suffering people and that even when we somehow behave not as required, maybe we are under such a stress, that if this stress is removed, we will be seen as very sympathetic souls also. Thank you very much.

George Alexander:
I have been asked by the jury to restate the second point. 1 believe it to be that the gentleman thinks it unfortunate that the community of victims of psychiatric abuse are not consulted more regularly by the legislature when laws are made on this subject.

Thomas Szasz:
I would like to answer that question because it is a very obvious one. The legislature does consult with the experts but the experts are not the patients, but the doctors. This is part of looking at it medically. After all, when experts make laws about which pharmaceuticals to permit to be sold for pneumonia or gout or something, they don't ask patients who have gout, they ask doctors who are experts on gout. So this is part of the fact that this kind of torture that was so elegantly described, is called "medicine": It's not medicine and Mr. Perlstein also made the point that I thought I would make a small comment about: Why don't the organized churches help such persons in distress? Again the answer is that the major recognized churches - the Christian churches, the Catholic church, the Protestant church, the Jewish organizations (at least in America) - are the most enthusiastic advocates and defenders of psychiatric brutality. And I think this is virtually never mentioned. Obviously this is not an elegant thing to say but this is an extremely important aspect of this thing. And I mentioned this in my initial statement, that you have the media, the medical profession and the churches - all of these major churches - against the patient, invariably, consistently, always.

D. T.:
Can I reiterate that with you, because I did actually ask for a vicar to come and visit me in the hospital and he wouldn't come. And, you know, I really felt I needed to talk to somebody outside and he wouldn't come.

T. S.:
Well, I can only repeat Dr. Leifer's statement that your understanding of psychiatry far surpasses...

D. T.
In the U.K. we have the National Service framework. It is a legal document saying that user and care abuse now. A lot of lip-service is being paid to that but I don't think that in reality it is happening yet, although the user movement is becoming a lot stronger in the U.K. now.

K. M.:
Sometimes that's called the "consumer movement". A consumer is someone who chooses between buying a Chevrolet and a Ford. Involuntary psychiatry is like having a whole automobile shoved down your throat - along with the gas, which is the drug.

Do you hope to expunge your record which will be like part of your life, probably involved with employment and so on and so forth...

D. T.:I would love to be given all my psychiatric notes and burn them but they won't let me.

K. M.:
Is there any possibility of you're erasing this record of your...

D. T.: No.

K. M.:
First of all there's a legal record of your commitment perhaps and secondly there are medical records which call you crazy -1 at least have them - and they are kind of hard to get at, let alone wipe out although there are ways in which you - if you really work at it and you can get a complicit doctor and perhaps some help from a solicitor - then it might be possible to erase that. I understand it is in the United States if you're extremely canny. I haven't achieved it yet. But is that possible in Britain?

D. T.:
No. I have tried to do everything I can to get rid of ... you know, to argue the point that ... everything and I can't.

K. M.:
Permanent stigma!

D. T.:
The only thing I hope to be able to do is perhaps if I do look at my notes again - and perhaps I shouldn't be saying this in public - is if they leave me alone, which sometimes they do because I've go volumes, sometimes they just go away and I run away with them and burn them myself and then I can just say: "Well, I'm mad".

K. M.:
So you're not permitted to have copies, only read them under supervision?

D. T.: Yes.

K. M.:
Aha, so it would be hard for your attorney to read them.

D. T.:
He does have copies of them though.

Question from the audience:
In case of the volume of psychiatric medicaments, neurolepticas, have you depressions after? Another thing is: How are you organized in England or Cambridge in self-help groups? We call it in some regions of Germany experts and their own ... There is a.., also of a self-help center. Another idea: what we see more and more is empowerment of groups or empowerment of people who were in psychiatry. We are on the way to find out that very often this is a more effective way to get forward. You can never get back to the time before you were in the hospital but it is burning holes in the brain and in the soul. That's unforgettable but just my question: Are you organized in self-help organizations or whatever?

D. T.:
I didn't catch your first part but your second part: Yes, we do have some very good user/survivor/consumer - whatever term you want to use - groups available and they are very

and I do sit on quite a lot of committees. There's no research and development one set up because the main hospital in Cambridge is now becoming a Mental Health and Community Care Trust. So they're reorganizing the mental health side of things, so I'm on a couple of those committees because of course they have to have a user view and they've got me and somebody else. I don't know how much they'll take notice of me but I'm going to be there to try and represent other users as well. So things are changing.

I didn't catch your first part, though, I'm sorry.

From the audience:
It was just the question: the consequence of psychopharmakas or so-called "modern atypical neurolepticas". Did it bring you in a deep depression after. Did you have to take under pressure these medicaments to get out of the psychiatric hospital?
D. T..
I was put on 	at one time and I wasn't told about the effects it would have if you go in the sun so I've now got problems with my skin because I reacted very badly and got an allergy all over. I'm quite sensitive to medication, so yes, I did react badly to many of them. And I was on a lot: I
was on Haloparadol, 	you name it, I've been on it.

Paolo Cuelho:
I want to go back to the strangling attempt. Do you think that the decision, the ultimate decision of releasing you, it was taken by your father or by the psychiatrist?
D. T.:
I think it was a combination of me playing the game and saying what I needed to say to get out and convince them that I was ok to be let out, my father pushing for me to come out as well. And I think it was a combination of factors. And also because they realized that they were doing nothing to help me and it was a waste of time me being there as well. It cost them nearly a quarter of a million pounds to lock me up for all that time. I wish they'd sent me to a health farm and I could have been massaged, pampered and had a good time. It would have been much more beneficial than where I was put.

K. M.:
They'd still be paying salaries anyway. May I ask: Did you feel that hospitalization was perhaps not only a depressing experience but did the effects of having been hospitalized and stigmatized, did you feel that that brought on depression at all, afterwards?
D. T.:
No, I don't but I find it very depressing to think about it. It is something I will never forget or get away from, it will always be there and especially the effects of being strangled will be there with me for the rest of my life. However, the only good thing is the people I met in the hospitals. You know, I did make some friends and met a lot of good, interesting people. So that was the only good thing.
George Alexander:
Thank you very much for you wonderful, candid testimony.

D. T.:
You're welcome.