Asylum Bound: The very odd training experience of a psychiatric nurse in the 1970s - Paperback

by Bill Lay (Editor), Simon Ennals (Author), Stuart Townsend (Author)

"God Has it come to this?" Meet Grace, white-haired, with dementia, being admitted to the daunting asylum with an unwelcome introduction from the student nurse. Then Percy, the crystal radio buff, with depression. Here is Harry, the Japanese ex-POW, whose bath-time is a re-living of battles fought and Walter, with the dodgy and less than faithful, girl-friend. What about Tom, who is getting secret signs from both the Newscaster on the BBC as well as the landlady of the local pub, or Betty who won't fit in the coffin, and needs a bit of encouragement? But also meet Stuart, the very novice student nurse fearfully working on nights, standing there being strangled, not knowing what to do, or trying to come to grips on his first day on the ward with shaving a corpse. Learn about what goes on in the long asylum corridor & how to survive the laws of the asylum jungle. Stuart has to rely on information from the unlikeliest of sources, the Social Club hard drinkers. Asylum Bound is a wild weird walk through the experiences of a student nurse as he enters the unknown world of the mental "asylum" of the 1970s. It is a bizarre world, a world of terrible extremes. Within this odd place there are Hogarthian characters of varying chaotic hues, some aggressive, some sad, some disturbed and some institutionalised, both patients and staff. It is in this strange world that Stuart begins to understand the origins of psychiatry and its terrible treatments, including lobotomies, E.C.T., insulin shock and even aversion therapy for underwear snatchers. He has to learn about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, new and frightening conditions that had new and frightening treatments and outcomes. But he finds an asylum coming to the end of any usefulness it might ever once have had. The patients are leaving, the staff are changing, and, thank God, the abuses are declining. It is a different world from anything he has experienced before. It is a very new world. It is a life-changing revelation. For Stuart, what started as a novelty, progressed to fascination and was to end in tragedy. It was the start of a long psychiatric nursing career. It is, sadly, all true.

Author Biography

Stuart Townsend is a pen name. Stuart read Theology at Cardiff University before embarking on a career in Psychiatric Nursing. From 1981, as a qualified nurse, he worked in all areas of psychiatry, before specializing in elderly psychiatry and then community psychiatry, both in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. During his entire career he worked as a clinical nurse, having professional contact with people in distress and mental anguish in the front line of psychiatric nursing. He retired from clinical work in 2010, to concentrate on writing and training. Stuart is married to a psychiatric nurse specializing in forensic psychiatry. They have three sons. His interests include history, golf and bridge. He lives in Nottinghamshire U.K.