Picture this you wake up one morning feeling slightly less pleased with life than your usual self and within a few days you're under a table having pieces of your brain cut out in an attempt to find a cure for your sadness. This was the life many people endured during the Great depression, most patients were incorrectly diagnosed with depression and labeled as insane. Ignorance towards the mentally ill during the 1930’s ensued thousands of patients receiving incompetent treatments, jeopardizing any bit of sanity and health they had prior to seeking medical attention.
The idea of cutting away at a perfectly functioning human brain rooted from the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz in 1935 and soon was advanced by surgeon Walter J. Freeman
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Compared to the other theories and procedures used to treat mental illness in the 1930s The Electroshock Therapy exemplified the most positive and successful results in patients. The official Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy was developed in 1938, however there were many different treatments prior that assisted in the discovery of this form of shock therapy. The first procedure was discovered by Julius Wagner-Jauregg, in 1917, known as Malaria-induced fever, to treat neurosyphilitic paresis. Julius Wagner-Jauregg established the use of illnesses and harmful infections to treat other illnesses. “He observed that insane patients improved considerably after surviving to severe typhoid fever, erisipella or tuberculosis infections.” His success with the use of the induced fever lead to him testing his theory by experimenting in inducing fevers such as “infection by erisipella, injections of tuberculin, typhoid in his patients (Sabbatini).” 10 years after the discovery of the Malaria-induced fever, in 1927, a Surgeon by the name of Manfred J. Sakel, from Berlin created Insulin-induced coma and convulsions, to treat schizophrenia. Sakel’s discovery was entirely accidental he mistakenly overdosed a patient yet shockingly was able to successfully cure them. In 1930 he began focusing more on this miraculous discovery, leading to the creation of the "Sakel's Technique" for treatment of schizophrenics. The results of the Sakels Technique revealed a 70% or greater success rate among his patients. Based on the concept of the Sakels Technique, the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislaus J. von Meduna devised Metrazol-induced convulsions, Metrazol results in conversely strong seizures, which may result in tendon and muscles tearing even broken bones. The Metrazol is only effective when continuously used 2-3 times a week.
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
The mentally ill was mistreated, beaten, thrown into unclean quarters, and even taken advantage of before the 1800's. They was viewed as helpless individuals. Society and the government viewed them as criminals and deemed them incurable. During the 1800's a pioneer named Dorothea Dix brought about a change dealing with the treatment of the mentally ill. She became the voice of them something they never had.
One of the most famous forms of a cure during the 1930s was a surgery called Lobotomy. “Lobotomy, also known as leucotomy which mean cut/slice white in Greek, or its nickname of ice pick, is a neurosurgical operation that involves severing connection in the brain’s prefrontal lobe” according to Freeman. Lobotomy was performed by
In the 1800’s people with mental illnesses were frowned upon and weren't treated like human beings. Mental illnesses were claimed to be “demonic possessions” people with mental illnesses were thrown into jail cells, chained to their beds,used for entertainment and even killed. Some were even slaves, they were starved and forced to work in cold or extremely hot weather with chains on their feet.
“The Great Depression was a worldwide economic slump of the 1930’s” (Fetzer; p.338). The Great Depression caused a catastrophic amount of grief and distress for the citizens of the United States. Some of these citizens, however, faced more problems which caused grief and distress than others. Among those citizens were the mentally ill. During the era of the Great Depression, the mentally handicapped were treated unfairly in almost every aspect of their lives; this included how society treated them, how they were treated medically, and even how their personal lives were affected.
Penfield’s recherce and brain stimulation he was able to map the brain and its functional organization in living people. During his experiments he found that sending a shock to certain parts of the brain would have different reactions. By using this method Penfield was able to find the cause of epilepsy seizers and destroy it. In one case the patient would smell burnt toast right before a seizer, he used this knowledge to probe the limbic system to recreate the smell. None of this would have been possible without the map he created, the map was so influential that it is still used today. However, we no longer need to cut open the skull to see what inside, thanks to modern medicine MRIs are used to see what’s going on in our
Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is a highly effective yet controversial psychiatric method that involves sending electric shockwaves into the brain to cure various mental ailments. Because the populace is not typically educated by psychiatrists on techniques such as ECT, their knowledge comes from inaccurate, and mostly negative, descriptions in the media dictated by non-psychiatrists. Additionally, many patient families are skeptical of ECT because it is not common practice to allow non-medical staff in the therapy room. Furthermore, some psychiatrists perceive this treatment as callous because it is occasionally used without the consent of a patient, should they not be mentally stable. Moreover, because of strong public opposition, ECT
Firstly, lobotomy and shock treatment was fairy common during this era and after the book release these methods stopped and further research were put into medication towards mental illness. This means that the release of this book is part of the reason that we today can treat sicknesses with medication that has the
Jobs were cut, lower wages and less workers due to Depression. People thought it co...
Danvers, an insane asylum in Boston, Massachusetts was the rumored birthplace of the procedure known as lobotomy (Taylor). Dr. Walter Freeman studied lobotomy, and he was the first to practice the procedure. Lobotomy began with electric shock to the forehead. Then the eye lids were folded back and an ice pick was used to sever the frontal lobes. The patient would have black eyes after this awful procedure. This was supposed to cure an insane person (“YouTube”).
The treatment involved passing electrical currents through the brain which would trigger a small seizure and ease the symptoms of certain mental illnesses, however the procedure was used without anesthesia and caused the patient to jerk uncontrollably, this treatment would sometimes result in fractures, memory loss, and other side effects. The treatment is still used today, although with much weaker currents and anesthesia. Another popular treatment used in the asylums was the injection of insulin into a patient to induce a coma. This treatment was thought to reset an individual’s brain and bring them back to “normal”, however, insulin coma therapy proved to be not very effective and was phased out in the 1960s. One of the most inhumane treatments for the mentally ill was the lobotomy, or the prefrontal leucotomy. This surgical procedure involved opening a hole in the head to sever nerve pathways in the prefrontal cortex. The lobotomy was performed at least 15,000 times in Britain before being phased out in the late 1950s. Another type of brain surgery discussed in the film, was one done on patient, Maggi Chapman, who underwent a surgery in which an electrode was attached to a part of her brain and then turned on to fry that part of the brain. Maggi goes on to describe how the next few years she felt like a zombie and had a difficult time going through life (BBC,
The Effect of the Great Depression on National and Individual Morale The Great Depression of the 1930’s was an era of hopelessness and fear for many. Coming soon after the prosperous Coolidge era, the Depression affected a nation of people who had based their self esteem around their ability to work and provide well for their families (Clements, page 67 - 69). Individuals and families had to contend not only with an existence that pushed people close to suicide and starvation, but a total loss of self worth and the haunting memories of the cars, radios and relatively luxurious lives they would have led five years previously.
The 1920s were known as carefree and relaxed. The decade after the war was one of improvement for many Americans. Industries were still standing in America; they were actually richer and more powerful than before World War I. So what was so different in the 1930’s? The Great Depression replaced those carefree years into ones of turmoil and despair.
For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.
The community care for mentally ill people was one of the biggest improvements in the development of the NHS. During the Victorian Era the quantity of mentally ill people was alarming; charities, churches and philanthropists were the financial support for people with mental disorders during that period.