Everyone Carries a Shadow

by Stephen Gaskell

My brother’s death didn’t need to meaningless. It would be my spur to reveal the cruel practices that go for treatment in our mental institutions up and down this land. I would become a patient and expose these places from the inside. This then is the true reason for my absence from these pages. For the last three weeks, unknown to all but a select few personages, I have been a resident of Bedlam. What I discovered will sound like one of Aesop’s fabulous tales, or perhaps, more pertinently, the ravings of a madman, but I swear by the light of the Lord, all that you will read ahead is a true account of events.