Lobotomy
The process of lobotomy was based on several decades of experimental and clinical evidence. Lobotomy is a neurosurgical procedure in which the nerve fibers in the bundle of white matter in the frontal lobe of the brain are severed to interrupt the transmission of various affective responses. It is seldom performed, because it has many unpredictable and undesirable effects. This includes personality change, aggression, socially unacceptable behavior, incontinence, apathy, and lack of consideration for others. Because lobotomy is simple to perform, it was over used in the treatment of mentally ill patients in the past.
This process is a form of psychosurgery. The effectiveness of such procedures has never been adequately evaluated. The availability of many antipsychotic drugs has greatly reduced the use of this surgery. A few surgeons still use it for severe emotional problems. In all states of the United Sates there are special boards that review all of the proposed operations.
A Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz experimented with the fact that, the frontal lobes led to psychiatric disease. Disrupting these connections could lead to a cure. He performed this 1935, he injected the white frontal lobes with alcohol. In 1949 he received the Nobel Prize for this new discovery. This new procedure spread like wild fire throughout the U.S. By 1950 286 hospitals were using this procedure on 18,000 patients.
At a conference in London, John Fulton brought in two chimpanzees. He had completely removed the entire frontal lobes from these two animals. They seemed to be very calm and quiet. Moniz and Freeman were both in attendance that day. In September 1935 Moniz participated in the first surgery with Almeida Lima. T...
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Resnick, Susan Kushner. In the Graveyard of Western Medicine-Lobotomy. East West Natural Health. May-June 1992. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Publishing. Berkeley College Lib., West Paterson, NJ. 23 Nov. 2001. http://search.epnet.com.
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Vertosick Jr., Frank T. Lobotomy's Back. Discover, Oct.97, Vol. 18 Issue 10. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO Publishing. Berkeley College Lib., West Paterson, NJ. 23 Nov. 2001. http://search.epnet.com.
Youngson, Robert and Ian Schott. Medical Blunders: The History of Lobotomy. http://www.scc.net/~1kcmn/lobotomy/lobo/brif.html.
The early history of mental illness is bleak. The belief that anyone with a mental illness was possessed by a demon or the family was being given a spiritual was the reason behind the horrific treatment of those with mental illness. These individuals were placed into institutions that were unhygienic and typically were kept in dark, cave like rooms away from people in the outside world. The institutions were not only dark and gross; they also used inhumane forms of treatment on their patients. Kimberly Leupo, discusses some of the practices that were used, these included may types of electro shocks, submitting patients to ice bath, as well as many other horrific events (Leupo). Lobotomies, which are surgical procedures that cut and scrape different connections in the brain, were very common practice. They were thought to help cure mental illness, but often ended up with more damage than good.
Walton, Sir John. Brain's Diseases of the Nervous System. Oxford University Press. New York, 1955, pp. 365.
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
Madness: A History, a film by the Films Media Group, is the final installment of a five part series, Kill or Cure: A History of Medical Treatment. It presents a history of the medical science community and it’s relationship with those who suffer from mental illness. The program uses original manuscripts, photos, testimonials, and video footage from medical archives, detailing the historical progression of doctors and scientists’ understanding and treatment of mental illness. The film compares and contrasts the techniques utilized today, with the methods of the past. The film offers an often grim and disturbing recounting of the road we’ve taken from madness to illness.
Moral treatment is a treatment that uses “psychological methods” to treat mental diseases (Packet Two, 26). In general, moral treatment was a relatively benevolent and humane approach to treat mental disorders. Before the introduction of moral treatment, insane people were regarded by the general public as wild animals whose brains were physically impaired and usually incurable (Packet One, 11). Therefore, regardless of patients’ specific symptoms, physicians generally labeled patients as lunatics and treated them with the same method (Packet One, 11). Because of the perceived impossibility of curing mental illness, physicians put far greater emphasis on restraining patients’ potential danger behaviors than striving to bring them back to sanity. Cruel methods such as bloodletting were widely used, but their effectiveness was really poor. Moral treatment was a response to this ineffective and brutal traditional treatment. The advocates of moral treatment insisted that mental diseases were curable. By providing a friendly environment that contributed to reviving, moral treatment could help patients to...
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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”).
Phillips, J. G. "The Early Treatment Of Mental Disorder: A Critical Survey Of Out-Patient Clinics." Journal Of Mental Science 69.(1923): 471-482. PsycINFO. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
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,
Szasz, Thomas. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2007. Print. Braslow, Joel T. Mental Ills and Bodily Cures: Psychiatric Treatment in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. California: University of California, 1997. Print.
Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.610-612. Print.
Mental illness, today we are surround by a broad array of types of mental illnesses and new discoveries in this field every day. Up till the mid 1800’s there was no speak of personality disorder, in fact there was only two type of mental illness recognized. Those two illnesses as defined by Dr. Sam Vaknin (2010), “”delirium” or “manial”- were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions.” It was later in 1835 when J. C. Pritchard the British Physician working at Bristol Infirmary Hospital published his work titled “Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorder of the Mind” this opened the door to the world of personality disorder. There were many story and changes to his theories and mental illness and it was then when Henry Maudsley in 1885 put theses theories to work and applied to a patient. This form of mental illness has since grown into the many different types of personality disorder that we know today. Like the evolution of the illness itself there has been a significant change in the way this illness is diagnosed and treated.
Nevertheless, by insisting “the business of psychiatry is control and coercion, not care and cure” or that it is “human activity governed by human interest” (Szasz 18-19), Szasz neglects to add to the solution. In turn, adding more confusion to the melting pot of stigma the public eye has to sort through while searching for answers. Furthermore, without physical proof of such acts of coercion or control by any person(s) or entity, Szasz is in turn, feeding careless propaganda to the public and the media as well as other professional and medical communities. In 1951, a humanistic psychologist by the name of Carl Rodgers, organized a few propositions that would later be a foundation in most cognitive therapies for the next few generations. Rodgers argues that: