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Dr William Walters Sargant, is one of the most influential figures in the history of psychiatry in Britain. However, his disdain of conventional psychotherapy and interest in controversial drug-reliant treatments would, if replicated nowadays, surely muddy the waters of many a medical negligence claim.
Perhaps his most controversial treatment was his use of Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) in conjunction with Deep Sleep Treatment (narcosis).
Sargant would use this treatment to induce comas in patients, sometimes for more than a month. He believed that this provided the opportunity for a kind of psychological deconstruction called "depatterning", during which he would periodically wake patients and administer electric shocks, before returning them to a comatose state. It was not uncommon for these patients to receive thrice-daily shocks of around 150 volts.
Many of his treatments were carried out on behalf of secret services, without the consent of patients, sometimes resulting in long term and total amnesia. Sargant saw this complete amnesia as a desirable state, actually stating that he wished patients to lose all sense of their "space-time image".
Although he admitted that such an identity void did cause anxiety in the "second stage", Sargant remarked that in the "third stage" a very positive state could be reached whereby the patient loses "constriction of the range of recollections which one ordinarily brings in to modify and enrich one's statements. Hence, what the patient talks about are only his sensations of the moment and he talks about them almost exclusively in highly concrete terms. His remarks are entirely uninfluenced by previous recollections - nor are they governed in any way by his forward anticipations. He lives in the immediate present. All schizophrenic symptoms have disappeared . There is complete amnesia for all events in his life."
None of Sargant's patients has ever received clinical negligence compensation. However, another doctor, Harry Bailey, performed similar treatments in Sydney, Australia between 1962 and 1979; 26 died as a result. Bailey also faced criminal prosecution. Just as he was about to be sentenced to a jail term, he committed suicide, taking a fatal dose of tranquillisers and barbiturates.
Interestingly, when the civil claims of Bailey's patients were going through the courts, solicitors representing the defendant contacted William Sargant to ask him if he would give evidence for the defence. Sargant responded by saying that he would have to decline, because "his evidence would be supporting the prosecution". During these conversations, Sargant also admitted that many of his own patients had also died during sleep therapy.
Unfortunately, the fact that all crucial documents relating to Sargant's treatments have been destroyed means it is highly unlikely any of his patients will ever receive personal injury compensation for their traumas.
William Sargant died in 1988, perhaps his epitaph would be best written in his own words: "I suppose this horrifies people today."
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