| |
CASE ABUSE
REPORTS Greatness Destroyed
Unaware that psychiatry and its dangerous treatments are not based on medical
science, many great artists whose gifts have enriched our lives, have fallen
victim to ECT and psychosurgery.
Frances Farmer was a screen and stage actress whose career lit up Hollywood
and Broadway in the ‘30s and ‘40s. The world was shocked when she revealed the
ruin psychiatry had inflicted upon her. Jessica Lange later portrayed her story
in the movie, Frances. Upset over a string of failed relationships, Farmer
had been committed to an institution in 1943. She was subjected to 90 insulin
shocks and electroshock. She told of being “raped by orderlies, gnawed on by
rats, poisoned by tainted food, chained in padded cells, strapped in strait
jackets and half drowned in ice baths.” Her last “treatment” was a lobotomy
at the hands of the infamous Walter J. Freeman. Freeman arrogantly described
lobotomy as “mercy killing of the psyche,” adding that “patients … must sacrifice
some of [their] driving force, creative spirit and soul.”
Following the operation, Farmer never regained her abilities and died at the
age of 57, destitute.
Vivien Leigh, star of classic movies such as Gone with the Wind
and A Streetcar Named Desire, was subjected to repeated ECT in psychiatric
facilities in England, one treatment leaving burns on her temple. Husband Sir
Lawrence Olivier was devastated by the changes in Leigh’s personality: “I can
only describe them by saying that she was not, now that she had been given the
treatment, the same girl that I had fallen in love with. … She was now more
of a stranger to me than I could ever have imagined possible. Something had
happened to her, very hard to describe, but unquestionably evident.”
Judy Garland, one of America’s all-time greatest performers, saw her
career and life ruined, as she became a victim of prescribed psychiatric drugs
and electroshock.
Bud Powell was a child prodigy. As a pianist and composer he became
the creator of the sound we know today as
bebop . Subjected to repeated electric shocks and administered braindamaging
psychiatric drugs, he died at the age of 42.
In the 1960s, Stevie Wright, the teenage lead singer of Australia’s
number one rock band, The Easybeats, was enjoying a string of hits such as “She’s
So Fine” and “Friday on My Mind.” By the age of 21, however, the fame was over.
The band folded. Wright developed a heroin habit. He was admitted to Chelmsford
private psychiatric hospital in Sydney where he underwent a deadly drug and
ECT combination called deep sleep treatment. His brain was so badly damaged
by the 14 electroshocks and drugs he was incapable of writing songs for the
next 10 years. The years of lost creativity were unbearable. He ended up living
on government sickness benefits.
Next
Back
to Contents
|
|
