We're All Mad Here

Elizabeth Cochran was one of the first “stunt journalists,” going where no woman had gone before. Too poor to afford much of an education, she dreamed of becoming a writer. After writing an anonymous letter to a newpaper editor, Elizabeth was hired as a freelancer for the paper, writing under the pen name “Nellie Bly.” Infiltrating the Blackwell Island Women’s Insane Asylum, Nellie Bly exposed the poor treatment suffered by the mentally ill as well as fighting for many other social justices.

Dr Shirley Turner did not appreciate being broken up with by fellow doctor, Andrew Bagby… so she shot and killed him in November of 2001. It didn’t take long for the police to figure out who did it, but somehow, Shirley, who ran back to Canada, managed to avoid conviction. And then she discovered she was pregnant with Andrew Bagby’s baby, and all hell broke loose.

Shirley Turner made it clear that she wanted to be a psychiatrist to make money, not to help people. Usually that just makes someone seem selfish or shallow, but Dr Turner was labelled a psychopath by her coworkers, Her career wasn’t like she had pictured it, and neither was her personal life. Before she received her Master’s degree, Shirley had been divorced twice and was trying to juggle three kids along with her residency hours. A stable relationship was not to be, and each time she was dumped, Shirley stalked her ex: harassing phone calls, driving thousands of miles to see them, even physically assaulting them. But Dr Shirley Turner was just warming up.

In 1892, early-day feminist Charlotte Perkins-Gilman published The Yellow Wallpaper in a literary journal. At first regarded as a piece of gothic fiction, the piece was soon corroborated by mental health professionals and eventually changed the way post-partum depression, among other ailments, was treated. Enjoy Rachel’s dramatization of Gilman’s piece.

The reason the Libby Zion Law was created is discussed with JJ and Ted from Conspiring to Argue. 18 year old Libby should never have died on that evening in 1984- but was it murder, or simply a flawed system?