Continuing my Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and The Kindness Institute‘s ‘Mindfulness Month NZ’ deep-dive post-series into Aotearoa’s history with mental health; I’d like to introduce you to an exceptional New Zealander: Janet Frame. Janet (28th of August 1924 – 29th of January 2004) was an award-winning New Zealand Author, who turned her turmoil into triumph.
In November 1945, she was admitted to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum in Dunedin NZ and was diagnosed with incipient schizophrenia (later proven to be an incorrect diagnosis), after attempting to commit suicide. Six weeks later she was released to her parent’s care in Ōamaru.
In February 1947, her younger sister Isabel drowned in tragically eerily similar circumstances to their older sister Myrtle Jean, who drowned ten years earlier. Janet’s health deteriorated, and in 1948, she received her first electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) at Christchurch’s Sunnyside Mental Hospital. She would spend the next eight years in between Seacliff and Auckland’s Avondale Hospital.
In 1951, her first book ‘The Lagoon and Other Stories’ was published, which won her the Hubert Church Memorial Award. In one of her autobiographies, she wrote that winning the Hubert Church award had persuaded Seacliff’s superintendent to forbid a pre-frontal lobotomy, which her mother had consented too. Her last hospital stay at Seacliff was between 1954 – 1955. In 1957, her first full length novel was published: ‘Owls Do Cry’ to general acclaim. In late 1956, she left Aotearoa, and lived in London, with brief sojourns to Ibiza and Andorra. She went on to publish many more books throughout her lifetime, including ‘An Angel at My Table’ in 1984, which was made into a film by Jane Campion in 1990. On the 6th of February 1990, she was the sixteenth appointee to the Order of New Zealand. She was also an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and held two honorary doctorates. In 2004, Janet died in Dunedin.
Photo: Janet Frame, photographer unknown.