As a teenager in 1960s Bradford, Jean Davison spent much of her time hanging out in coffee bars, talking fashion and pop music.

But, bored with her dead-end job, she felt empty and low. All Jean wanted was to talk to someone about how she felt, and eventually she asked her GP for help.

Before she knew it, she was a patient at the former High Royds psychiatric hospital in Menston, dosed up with heavy drugs and enduring electric shock treatment.

Jean says she was turned into a “zombie” on a cocktail of drugs and electro therapy, and was later horrified to discover she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now she’s helping mental health patients access the care they need, and has written a book, The Dark Threads, about her experiences.

“I was a fairly typical teenager. I had friends and a boyfriend,” says Jean. “But I was shy and confused about life. I left school at 15 to work in a factory and was bored and dissatisfied. I later became an office junior, but by 18 I was a depressed teenager.

“I just needed a sensible adult to talk to – what we’d call counselling now. Like most working-class families of that generation, my parents had a ‘pull yourself together’ attitude. I asked my GP if I could speak to a psychiatrist. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

A psychiatrist suggested she went to High Royds for rest and observation. “I was young and knew nothing about psychiatric hospitals. I thought it would give me a week’s break,” she says.

That ‘break’, in August, 1968, turned into a five-year nightmare. Jean went into High Royds and was immediately put on drugs, making her weak and drowsy.

“The system came down on me like a steamroller,” she says. “I was on a ward with patients with severe mental illness. Drowsy with drugs, I signed a consent form for electric shock treatment. I’d never heard of it, but I trusted the doctors.

“They took me to another part of the building and gave me a hot water bottle to hold, so my veins stood up for an injection. The nurse said it was to stop me swallowing my tongue. I laid on a bed and was given an anaesthetic. I woke up feeling disorientated, with a headache.”

Jean had regular electric shock treatments. After four months she was discharged, but attended the day hospital for five years. “The drugs made me depressed,” she says.

Eventually Jean refused more treatment. “A ward sister said I was having more electric shocks, telling me, ‘you’re no better’,” she says. “I felt dead inside. I thought if I came off them I couldn’t feel any worse, so I refused more treatment. It was my first act of assertiveness.”

Moving to the YMCA, then a bedsit, Jean was left to come off drugs alone, with no medical support.

“I stopped taking the drugs all at once, which I shouldn’t have done. I felt anxious, and went back into High Royds. I remember thinking, ‘maybe I do need drugs.’ I was there for a month and cut down gradually.”

Eventually the debilitating drowsiness and other distressing side-effects lifted, and by 1974, six years after going to High Royds, Jean started rebuilding her life. She went to university, gaining a first-class degree in psychology and literature. In 1979 she found love with Ian and the couple married. Now she works for a charity affiliated to Mind, helping people with mental health problems.

Years after leaving High Royds, Jean gained access to her case notes and discovered to her horror she’d been diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia. “I couldn’t believe it, I thought my diagnosis was depression,” she says.

“I had no classic symptoms of schizophrenia like hearing voices, hallucinations or psychotic delusions. They said I had ‘negative’ symptoms; lethargy, blunted emotions, social withdrawal. These days we’d call it depression.

“Being on a ward with severely ill patients at such a young age, and suffering the side-effects of neuroleptic drugs, made me even more withdrawn and depressed than initially. What self-esteem I had was crushed out of me.”

While in High Royds, Jean wrote a diary of her experiences. “I’d sit in the toilet with my legs up against the door, writing notes. It was the only place I had privacy,” she says. “I felt it was important to record my experiences.” Jean’s memoirs include information from her case notes and her interviews with doctors. Her book raises disturbing questions about the treatment of psychiatric patients.

“There have been improvements, but psychiatry today is arguably even more biologically focused,” she says. “Depression is too easily dismissed as a physical rather than a social problem. People with issues linked to bereavement, employment or relationships are prescribed drugs such as Prozac when often counselling is what’s needed. ECT is still widely used.

“I lost five years to the mental health system. Providing emotional and practical support for others is so rewarding.”

The Dark Threads, published by Accent Press Ltd, is priced £7.99. Jean is giving a talk about her experiences at Saltaire Bookshop on Thursday, September 10, at 6.30pm.