Lauretta Bender to Ellen Donnelly, March 6, 1955, Box 5, Folder 2. Courtesy of the Brooklyn College Archives and Special Collections, The Papers of Dr. Lauretta Bender.
Complete original text available here.
This letter responds to an inquiry from the Maudsley Hospital in London about Lauretta Bender’s use of ECT with children at Bellevue. The Maudsley, which opened its doors in 1923, was the first mental hospital in England to offer treatment for mental illness on a voluntary basis and became the country’s largest psychiatric training center. Children were admitted from the very beginning and pediatric services in its Children’s Department expanded rapidly during the 1930s.