Chelmsford Private Hospital was a psychiatric facility located near Sydney. In 1963, it was here that psychiatrist Harry Bailey began to administer deep sedation therapy (DST), or “deep sleep” as it was more commonly known. Bailey had studied “mind control” procedures, including “deep sleep”, under psychiatrists William Sargant in England, and Manfred Bleuer in Switzerland. He also trained in psychosurgery, used with tragic results at Chelmsford, under Prof. Lars Leksell in Sweden.

For Australians, the name Chelmsford has become synonymous with madness, barbarism and horror. It was a story of psychiatry run amok, of bizarre experiments, deaths and destroyed lives. New South Wales Health Minister, Peter Collins, referred to it as “the darkest episode of the history of psychiatry in this country.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reformsobserved that the term “deep sleep” was a misnomer: “First of all it isn’t a therapy”, having shown no therapeutic benefits. “Nor is it sleep. It is a coma induced by large doses of barbiturates (sedatives).”

And the outcome was all too often fatal. From mid-1963 to 1979, the deaths from this “treatment” mounted. Then there were the suicides that followed treatment, their numbers difficult to verify. Those who survived returned home with brain damage, their lives ruined. Bailey, however, with friends in high places, was able to offset official inquiries for many years.