Life as a Teen Psych Ward Patient: Hear the Story in Austin April 6

Few people could spend years locked up in a mental institution and emerge against overwhelming odds as a successful physician. But I did.

When I was 18 years old, the inexplicably bizarre behavior I was displaying was eventually diagnosed as epilepsy. Since it was considered to be a shameful mental illness at that time in the 1960s, it landed me in a mental institution - Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland, an institution made (in)famous by the books (and movies) I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Lilith.

To make matters worse, I was assigned a psychiatrist who was sadistically mentally ill. I knew it, but no one, not even my family, believed me. Sure enough, years later this doctor who told me I would be a “lifer” ended up as a mental patient in a state hospital. But for two years, ten days and four hours I was locked up in Main Four Ward – the ward reserved for the sickest patients, desperate to extricate myself from this traumatic situation and to hang onto my own sanity, which was still completely intact.

Upon my release, I needed to take back some of the power robbed from me so I tried to go back to school, but my status as an ex-mental patient was a deterrent for many admissions programs. I finally managed to graduate from college, then went through it all again to get into medical school. I became a doctor, practiced family medicine for decades, and then specialized in hospice and palliative care medicine. Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

I hope to inspire those who find themselves in unthinkable circumstances like I once did.

- Dr. Ruth Simkin

Dr. Simkin will be reading from and signing copies of my memoir, The Jagged Years of Ruthie J., at Book Woman on Tuesday, April 6 at 7 p.m. Book Woman is located at 5501 North Lamar #1 – 105.