Celebrity Traitors' Celia Imrie suffered ‘horrific' treatment in doctor's ‘sleep room'

Edinburgh Live

14-05-2025

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Former patients of psychiatrist William Sargant have revealed the horrifying treatment they received at a renowned London hospital. Author Jon Stock has collected stories from several of Sargant's victims, including well-known actress and star of 'Celebrity Traitors', Celia Imrie.
Speaking to the Mirror, Jon said that a majority of the people subjected to Sargant's cruel "Sleep Room" therapies were women and young girls. The troubling revelations include Sargant's preference for lobotomising unhappily-married women, rather than allowing them to go through with divorce.
Sargant justified his disturbing stance by saying: "A depressed woman, for instance, may owe her illness to a psychopathic husband who cannot change and will not accept treatment. Separation might be the answer, but... we have seen patients enabled by a [lobotomy] to return to the difficult environment and cope with it in a way which had hitherto been impossible."
(Image: Hilary Stock)
The unethical doctor went as far as humiliating his female patients by having them parade nearly-nude before audiences of medical students.
Amongst those mistreated by Sargant is acclaimed actress Celia Imrie, whose credits include hits like 'Bridget Jones's Diary' and 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'. She is set to appear again on television screens in the BBC's 'Celebrity Traitors'.
Imrie confided to Jon about developing an eating disorder during her youth after being labelled "too big" to realise her ambition of becoming a ballet dancer.
(Image: GL Weekend)
She detailed her extreme efforts to lose weight, stating: "I worked out every means possible to dispose of food, determined to get 'small' enough to be a dancer, and I was soon little more than a carcass with skin."
Her experience under the care of Sargant was disturbing, as she recounted: "The side effects were startling. My hands shook uncontrollably for most of the day, and I'd wake up to find clumps of my hair on the pillow."
Celia described the harrowing ordeal: "But the worst consequence was that everything I saw was in double vision. When Sargant came into the room, there were two of him. It was horrific and terrifying."
She further explained the treatment's impact: "Even simple tasks such as picking up a glass of water became impossible. I was injected with insulin every day too. Sargant was a big believer in fattening up his patients to get them well and you soon put on weight with insulin.
"I think I had what was called 'sub-coma shock treatment'– you weren't given enough insulin to induce a hypoglycaemic coma, but it was enough to make you drowsy, weak, sweaty and hungry."
She added: "I will never know for sure if I was given electric shocks during my stay," due to missing medical records, a situation Celia blames on Sargant: "Some years back, I tried to find my hospital records, to see the details of my treatment. Unfortunately, Sargant seems to have taken away a lot of his patients' records, including mine, when he retired from the NHS in 1972."
(Image: Alamy Stock Photo)
She concluded with lingering doubts, expressing: "Either that, or they were destroyed. I can't remember ECT happening to me, but I can remember it happening to others."
Sargant's methods were brutal and included electroshock therapy. "I vividly recall every sight, sound and smell," Celia remembered.
"The huge rubber plug jammed between her teeth; the strange almost silent cry, like a sigh of pain, she made as her tormented body shuddered and jerked; the scent of burning hair and flesh. It was a terrible thing for a fourteen-year-old to witness."
(Image: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Women were placed in Sargant's care for the most trivial of reasons. Jon told the Mirror that patient Mary Thornton was admitted to The Sleep Room after her parents suspected she was having a romance with an "inappropriate" boy.
She told Jon that she also only has patchy memories of her treatment: "One is of the electrodes being attached to the side of my head. I remember the complete, utter terror because I didn't even know who I was."
Jon says this was a common reason for young women's hospitalisation: "In the mid 1960s, for example, a wealthy businessman contacted Sargant, explaining that his daughter had fallen in love with an "unsuitable" local man in Europe and wanted to marry him."
Sargant was tasked with curing the young girl's love-struck "madness."
He explains: "A photo later emerged of Sargant, the father and a heavily sedated daughter standing at the door of the aeroplane that had returned her to the UK."
A former student at the hospital told Jon: "Basically, Sargant brought this attractive young woman back at the end of a needle."
Rumours link Sargant to the CIA's infamous MK Ultra "mind control" programme, with speculation that the US spy agency may have funded some of his work. Jon states: " The minutes of St Thomas' Research Advisory Committee meeting reveal that in September 1963, Sargant announced that an anonymous donor would fund the salary of a research registrar (£80,000 a year in today's money) for two years. Sargant refused to reveal the donor's identity."
(Image: Chris Floyd)
Jon confirms that Sargant did have ties to the intelligence community, stating: "Sargant did regular work for MI5 – in 1967, for example, he was called in to assess the mental health of Vladimir Tkachenko, a suspected Russian defector."
However, Jon admits that proving Sargant's association with the CIA is one of the most challenging aspects of the story.
One former serviceman, Eric Gow, who participated in drug trials under the impression he was helping to cure the common cold, reported being given massive doses of LSD. Jon says that Gow claims to recall seeing Sargant overseeing some of these experiments at the MOD's chemical and biological research facility at Porton Down.
The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal by Jon Stock is published by the Bridge Street Press (£25).