17 h. ago Trans woman, threatened with electric shock therapy as child, comes out in 60s

Samantha Wolsey first wore a dress at the age of six, but kept her true identity private for years

Events

22 h. ago 'I was threatened with electric shock therapy as a little boy for wearing a dress

Samantha Wolsey was just six years old when she walked downstairs to show off her dress to her dad, just like her sisters, but the little boy was taken straight to a psychiatrist

Events

22 h. ago 'I was left seriously injured in taxi rank attack so kept my real identity hidden for years, until now'

Samantha, previously known as Billy, was beaten up for dressing as a woman in Wigan in the 1990s and even threatened with electric shock therapy as a child

Events

22 h. ago My wife didn't believe me when I told her my true identity... until I showed her

Samantha, previously known as Billy, was beaten up for dressing as a woman in Wigan in the 1990s and even threatened with electric shock therapy as a child

Politics

1 week ago Moment missing toddler is found alive in the freezing cold curled up in ditch

The two-year-old boy was found alive in a ditch wearing only a nappy amid freezing temperatures overnight in Blackman Township, Michigan - dramatic new footage shows the moment he was rescued

Events

1 week ago The Sleep Room by Jon Stock review – shocking tales from 1960s psychiatry

The horrifying truth behind the practices of psychiatrist William Sargant, one of Britain’s most influential mental health practitionersYou’d think a sleep room would be cosy, but the one on Ward 5 of the Royal Waterloo hospital in London, back in the 1960s, was dark and airless, a twilight zone where up to six patients – almost always young women – would lie comatose on grey mattresses for weeks, even months on end. They had come in with schizophrenia, anorexia or, in a few cases, a youthful waywardness that their parents hoped could be cured. For William Sargant, the psychiatrist in charge, the cure lay not only in prolonged narcosis but insulin shock therapy, ECT and, if need be, lobotomy. Afterwards, the patients had no memory of what had been done to them. The Sargant method was to wipe their minds clean.Celia Imrie, later a famous actor, was admitted to Ward 5 in 1966, when she was 14. To her it was “like being in a prison camp” and her recovery “owed nothing” to the “tru...

Events

3 w. ago Emmerdale's Lisa Riley reveals shock therapy after death of Strictly star

Emmerdale star Lisa Riley has opened up about the toll the death of her Strictly Come Dancing partner Robin Windsor has taken on her mental health, and how she has sought therapy to help her deal with her grief

Events