"So could you please throw my head in a tub I could really use a cereberal scrub Wash away all I know It's an over rated frontal lobe" [img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/insulin%20shock.jpg[/img]Only a few individuals could afford psychoanalysis. People who ended up in mental hospitals did generally not receive any type of psychotherapy. Most of them suffered from severe and persistent forms of mental illness, such as schizophrenia, psychosis, general paresis (the tertiary effects of syphilis) and dementia. Psychiatrists experimented with a number of somatic treatment methods for these disorders. On the left: insulin shock treatment for schizophrenia. Patients were injected with insulin, which made them unconscious. For many patients, this was an agonizing experience close to a near-death experience. Insulin shock treatment was generally considered successful until a double blind experiment demonstrated that it had no effect whatsoever. [img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/lobotomy.gif[/img][img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/lobotomyfreeman.jpg[/img]Another form of treatment that became popular during the 1930s was lobotomy. The only Nobel prize ever awarded to a psychiatrist or a neurologist went to the inventor of this technique, the Portuguese physicians Egas Moniz. The American neurologist Walter Freeman simplified the procedure so that it could be performed with something that closely resembled an ice-HPSC3010/pic/k. On the right, first, a deHPSC3010/pic/tion of Moniz's procedure, and then the simplified method Freeman used. Freeman traveled around the United States visiting state mental hospitals were he administered his treatment to hundred of patients. [img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/ECT.jpg[/img] Also developed in the 1930s was electroshock treatment. Initially, it was administered to a great number of inmates in mental hospitals. Apart from providing some benefit, it was also used as a punitive measure to keep patients docile (see the movie One flew over Cuckoo's nest). Electroshock treatment (ECT) is still in use today for the treatment of severe depression. Patients are put to sleep first and are given a muscle relaxant, so that they don't suffer the side-effects of earlier versions of this treatment. [img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/prozac.jpg[/Img]Somatic psychiatry is experiencing a revival during the 1990s. Before that time, somatic treatment methods were provided to individuals suffering from severe and persistent forms of mental illness. The worried well, or relatively normal individuals who could maintain themselves in daily life but nevertheless suffered from depression, anxiety, or neuroses went for psychotherapy. With the introduction of prozac and other antidepressants, such life problems are now reinterpreted as caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Millions of people world-wide are taken prozac and other antidepressants. Psychotherapy becomes more unpopular by the day. Several other conditions, such as hyperactivity, are now diagnosed as caused by ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) and treated with drugs (ritalin in this case). Increasingly, we are interpreting pain and suffering as caused by brain chemistry rather than by unusual challenges faced in life. This has dramatic consequences for the way we view ourselves, the problems we face in life, and what type of solutions we seek for them. [img]http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/course2003/HPSC3010/pic/prozac%20cartoon.jpg[/img]