An Incredibly Sad Story

I don't normally copy and paste a story directly from the newspapers but in this case I have to make an exception. It was in the papers last week and it struck a chord with me, not just because it is one of the saddest stories I have read in a long time but also because one of my Great-Grandfathers was placed in a mental institution after getting drunk and setting light to some curtains in the family home. He died in the 'mental' home back in 1951 despite efforts from his family to have him released, his stay was only a couple of years, this poor woman's was a lifetime.

In 1972, the psychologist David Rosenhan conducted an experiment into the validity of diagnoses of mental health. Eight associates of his, all in perfect mental health, went to psychiatric hospitals and told them that they were hearing voices. Their behaviour in all other respects remained normal. All eight were admitted to hospital, mostly with diagnoses of schizophrenia.

Where records were kept, almost all the other patients realised immediately that the researchers had no mental health problems. It took the hospitals, however, up to 52 days to realise the same thing, and in one case, the researcher was only discharged with considerable difficulty. Subsequent to the publication of Rosenhan's paper, numerous people with real problems were turned away from American hospitals in the belief that they were psychology researchers.

The debate over Rosenham's experiment goes on, but we've just been reminded in a heartbreaking way that the institutional tendencies he exposed can destroy entire lives. When Rosenham conducted his experiment, Jean Gambell had been in mental institutions for exactly 35 years, for almost no reason. She was to remain in them for another 35 years, and now, at the age of 85, there seems no point in removing her.

Her story begins when she was working at a doctor's surgery as a cleaner, at the age of 15, in 1937. Half a crown – perhaps the equivalent of five pounds now – went missing and she was accused of stealing it. Instead of being prosecuted, she was sectioned under the 1890 Lunacy Act and committed to a mental institution. The money turned up some weeks later. A normal criminal case would have been dropped, but by that point she was institutionalised.

Her family was subject to other pressures; her brothers were themselves placed in care homes. Her family broke up, and when her mother died, a quarter of a century ago, all connection between her and her nearest relations was severed.

Heartbreakingly, she went on insisting to her carers that she did have a family, describing them and giving their names. The institution did not explore this adequately, and indeed seems to have dismissed this as the fantasies of Miss Gambell, who by now had been characterized as feeble-minded. She remained where she was, unvisited.

By chance, one of her brothers went on living in his mother's house, and it was there that a letter recently arrived, addressed to his late mother – it does not seem to have occurred to anyone involved that a woman of 85 might not have a parent still living, though in this case the negligence had a benevolent result. He noticed that the envelope had the name "Jean Gambell" written in the corner, and opened it. It was a questionnaire inquiring whether his mother was satisfied with the care being given to her daughter. He carried out his own inquiries, and discovered that a sister he barely knew about was still living.

When he and his brother visited her for the first time, they were warned that she could only communicate through writing and was unlikely to be able to understand who they were. She came into the room, looked at them, and unhesitatingly said "Alan ... David." and embraced them. A whole life gone.

The medical authorities of the time were, clearly, not just negligent but actively wicked. Whoever engineered the incarceration of Miss Gambell should be reviled, even at this distance in time. But whoever it was, they do not hold the responsibility for keeping her inside for 70 years. The relevant institutions took no effective action to discover why she was there; whether she could be released; what benefit was served by throwing away a person's lifetime. When "care in the community" started to be the watchword of mental health services, it did not seem to apply to one harmless lady already old.