Tells the story of Dr. Ralph Arrowsmith, a mid-20th century psychiatrist with a life-long connection to Coquitlam's Riverview Hospital [formerly Essendale asylum], a mental institution that opened in 1913 and closed in 2011. Dr. Arrowsmith, who was passionate about the psychiatric movement and deeply committed to his patients, recounts his years of practice with frank discussions of the treatment and perception of the mentally ill at the iconic mental hospital, from the peak of the institutional movement through deinstitutionalization.
Consciousness is part three of the Riverview Hospital Story Project.