The Royal Commission into Mental Health Services, more commonly known as the Chelmsford Royal Commission (1988–1990), was a

royal commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...

in the

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state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, chaired by Justice John Patrick Slattery. Established by the

Government of New South Wales The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the executive state government of New South Wales, Australia. The government comprises 11 portfolios, led by a ministerial department and supported by several agencies. Th ...

to investigate mental health services in the state, the royal commission came about only after prominent

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

radio and television shows pressured the newly elected Health Minister, Peter Collins, to make good his promises for a Royal Commission. Originally, its prime focus was to have been psychosurgery at the NSW Neuropsychiatric Institute. Following media pressure it focused more on the deep sleep therapy of Dr. Harry Bailey, who from 1963 to 1979 was the director of the state-funded Neuropsychiatric Institute and then Chelmsford Private Hospital, a private psychiatric institution in the Pennant Hills suburb of

. According to the National Institute of Health, "deep sleep was toxic coma for two to eight weeks in patients with intractable psychiatric conditions; about 40 deaths were associated with the treatment".

Background

Bailey committed suicide in September 1985 in response to the ongoing media exposure of his practices, as well as disquiet from among the ranks of other health professionals. He wrote in his suicide note: "Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won". However, during his period of time being a Director of Chelmsford, there were serious allegations of cover up by colleagues and serious failings of the State to investigate. The Royal Commission said in its 4000-page report that patients at Chelmsford received large doses of

barbiturates Barbiturates are a class of depressant drugs that are chemically derived from barbituric acid. They are effective when used medically as anxiolytics, hypnotics, and anticonvulsants, but have physical and psychological addiction potential as ...

which put them in comas for up to two weeks. Bailey described this mental state as a "holiday". He said that the drugs "have very beautiful chemicals that allows us to produce very stylish results in people’s mental functions". Bailey used deep sleep therapy (DST) for a variety of conditions, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric. Patients were put to sleep in a short-term coma-like state for up to two weeks or longer. While the patients were supposed to be woken up for toileting and daily nursing care, they were kept unconscious for at least two weeks. DST made its first appearance in the media in November 1967 in ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuous ...

''. The newspaper reported concerns about the excessive amount of drugs given to Ronald Carter, who was then 23 years old. He died in May 1967 while under deep sleep therapy. The drugs used in deep sleep therapy include Tuinal, Neulactil, Sodium Amyta, Placidyl, and Serenace. All of these substances were restricted under Schedule 4 of the Poisons Advisory Committee. 25 patients died from Deep Sleep Therapy and hundreds suffered side effects. The

Citizens Commission on Human Rights Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationality; ...

(CCHR) investigated deep sleep therapy with an intense focus, leading to the Royal Commission. The practice is now outlawed in Australia.

Outcomes

The Royal Commission into Mental Health Services would expose the current bureaucracy and medical profession to scrutiny. It might "sheet home to doctors, public servants and the various medical boards the consequences of what at worst has been a cover-up, and at best has been an exercise in negligence and incompetence."

The DST was Bailey's invention, a cocktail of barbiturates to put patients into a coma lasting up to 39 days, while also administering electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). Bailey likened the treatment to switching off a television; his self-developed theory was that the brain, by shutting down for an extended period, would "unlearn" habits that led to depression, addiction and other psychiatric conditions. Bailey claimed to have learnt DST from psychiatrists in Britain and Europe, though it was later found that only a mild variant was used there, sedating traumatised ex-soldiers for a few hours at a time, not the median 14 days under which Bailey and his colleague Dr John Herron subjected their 1,127 DST patients at Chelmsford between 1963 and 1979. Approximately 24 patients died under care of Bailey, after being admitted for usually non-serious medical conditions (some within 4 days of being admitted), with 19 committing suicide within a year of treatment.

A Victorian private psychiatric hospital which was associated with a quasi religious sect, Newhaven, "specialised in the use of

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD (from German ; often referred to as acid or lucy), is a semisynthetic, hallucinogenic compound derived from ergot, known for its powerful psychological effects and serotonergic activity. I ...

and

psilocybin Psilocybin, also known as 4-phosphoryloxy-''N'',''N''-dimethyltryptamine (4-PO-DMT), is a natural product, naturally occurring tryptamine alkaloid and Investigational New Drug, investigational drug found in more than List of psilocybin mushroom ...

(magic mushrooms), Deep Sleep Therapy and ECT."A twisted controller , Herald Sun
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References

{{New South Wales royal commissions New South Wales royal commissions Psychiatry controversies Lobotomy Physical psychiatric treatments British human subject research Medical controversies in the United Kingdom History of medicine in Australia