On working days, she was a scientist. After hours, a spiritual seeker. And in her youth, she was known

as the most disturbed patient in a large psychiatric hospital. We look at how Marsha Lennahan

built a therapy for borderline personality out of these broken pieces.

Welcome to the Carliside Psychiatry podcast, keeping psychiatry honest since 2003.

I'm Chris Agen, the editor-in-chief of the Carlott Psychiatry Report.

And I'm Kelly Newsom, a psychiatric MP and a dedicated reader of every issue.

On April 30, 1961, a 17-year-old Marsha Linehan was brought by her parents to the Institute of Living,

a psychiatric hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Her symptoms were not of the type that would get you

into a hospital today. Depression, withdrawal, tension, and headaches. But they were a change from her the girl she was.

Marcia was active and popular in high school, elected to leadership and voted queen of the junior

class ball. Her yearbook speaks of her empathy, good spirits, and high ideals. Now, just weeks

from her high school graduation, she found herself in a psychiatric ward.

On the outside, a rolling lawn landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect of Central

Park. But the inside was dark and lonely, and it was about to get worse.

Marcia had never injured herself before, but within days of admission she broke her glasses and cut her wrists.

She's not sure where she got the idea to do it.

Cutting spreads like a contagion in long-term facilities.

It releases endogenous opioids, giving instant relief to the emotional pain.

But the hospital had a protocol, and Marcia was carried in a stretcher to the locked ward. It was no longer just dark and cold. She was

now surrounded by the smell of urine and feces, and the screams of patients who broke out into

physical fights.

The urge for relief grew, and she broke a window to slash her arms and midsection with shards of glass, burned herself with stolen cigarettes.

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