Medal of the Order of Australia recipient and Christmas Hills resident Sandy Jeffs is releasing a new book with SANE Australia co-founder Dr Margaret Leggatt AM on Thursday 20 February.
Ten years in the making, Out of the Madhouse – From Asylums to Caring Community? was written after interviewing nearly eighty patients, carers and health professionals who were inmates or staff at Larundel Psychiatric Hospital, a cultural icon shrouded in mystery in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora.
After conducting these interviews, the authors were led to ask the question: What have we gained and what have we lost by closing this ‘madhouse on the edge of town’?
The book will be launched by ABC Radio National Science Friction presenter Natasha Mitchell and will be followed by a panel discussion led by SANE Australia CEO Jack Heath. Authors Sandy and Margaret will be joined by prominent mental health professionals and advocates Dr Ruth Vine (former Victorian Chief Psychiatrist), Julie Dempsey (Senior Consumer Consultant, Forensicare) and Michelle Swann (Senior Carer Advisor, Office of the Chief Mental Health Nurse).
The panellists will reflect on past practices chronicled in Out of the Madhouse along with recent developments, such as the shift towards recovery-centred approaches to care, and what we need to do going forward to build effective and inclusive models of care for people living with mental health issues.
“At a time of Royal Commissions and Productivity Commission Reports, Out of the Madhouse is a timely and heart-felt call to put people at the centre of mental health reform. Drawing on first-hand accounts, this book speaks to our common humanity across a breadth of experiences and perspectives from Larundel,” Mr Heath said.
For decades, Ms Jeffs has been an eloquent advocate for greater understanding of and support for people with schizophrenia, a diagnosis she has lived with since the age of 23. She was in inmate at Larundel in the 70s, 80s and 90s and was driven to write about Larundel to ensure the memory of the institution was not lost after its closure in 1999. Ms Jeffs feels lost memory is lost wisdom and it is important for people to know these places existed and what happened within them.
“I wanted to remind the community that Larundel existed and in closing it we may have lost a collective wisdom of how to treat mental illnesses”, Ms Jeffs said.
“We can’t go back to Larundel, but we now have a system that is vastly underfunded, over stressed and inadequate. The current Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System suggests there is something very broken and wrong with how we treat the mentally ill. Out of the Madhouse looks at what we gained and what we lost by closing institutions such as Larundel.”
Dr Leggatt has over 40 years of experience in the mental health sector working as a sociologist and occupational therapist. She was the founding director of the Schizophrenia Fellowship in 1978 (now known as Wellways) where she remained for seventeen years, and a co-founder of SANE Australia.
Dr Leggatt said, “When Sandy reached out and asked me to help write this book, I saw how important the testimonials were and knew we needed to bring them to life. There are as many perspectives of Larundel as there were people who were there; each bringing their own experience and emotional response to it.”
Out of the Madhouse – From Asylums to Caring Community? is published by Australian Scholarly Publishing. To purchase a copy of the book go to www.scholarly.info.
