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>I'm sorry, inserting an icepick through the eye then scrambling the brain behind it has a pretty well-deserved reputation as being barbaric. All surgery is ba

>I'm sorry, inserting an icepick through the eye then scrambling the brain behind it has a pretty well-deserved reputation as being barbaric. All surgery is barbaric in those terms. You're knocking people out and cutting them apart, it's never going to be pretty. It's only actually barbaric if you're doing it for no good reason. Lobotomy was crude and error-prone, but it was a lifesaving intervention for a substantial proportion of patients. Although some patients were probably needlessly subjected to a lobotomy, the absolute number of patients treated represented a very small proportion of the overall population living with severe and enduring mental illness. We didn't abandon lobotomy because we realised it was barbaric, we abandoned it because we discovered tricyclic antidepressants, antipsychotics and lithium. The discovery of those drugs was also the fundamental reason for de-institutionalisation in the 1960s and 70s - to a great extent the asylums emptied themselves, because enormous numbers of patients were now capable of independence. The fundamental lesson of the past isn't "psychiatry is terrible and we should be afraid of it", but "terrible things happen when you have desperately ill people and no good treatments". The solution is not a crusade against psychiatry, but a massive investment in developing new treatments and actually using the treatments we already have.

ncmncm 7y ago
"We didn't abandon lobotomy because we realised it was barbaric" Exactly the problem, right there. Many thousands of people were lobotomized not because they had severe, untreatable illnesses, but just because they were inconvenient. In only slightly more barbaric times and places they would be slaughtered or starved, as happened quite recently in China, Russia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Guatemala, Germany, ...
coldtea 7y ago
>I'm sorry, inserting an icepick through the eye then scrambling the brain behind it has a pretty well-deserved reputation as being barbaric. Wait till you hear about slashing the body with knives and cutting parts off then!
Mirioron 7y ago
>Lobotomy was crude and error-prone, but it was a lifesaving intervention for a substantial proportion of patients. But was that actually living and not just torture to please other people? My issue with psychiatry is that psychiatrists can force these things onto people. And when confronted about some of the terrible things done through that the answer is "but we are trying to help." People are fearful and suspicious of psychiatry because psychiatrists can basically imprison you and you have fewer rights than actual convicted prisoners. On top of that, if they get it wrong then there's no real accountability. While you're imprisoned, they can force you into many types of dangerous treatments and you have to obey. Cases like Gustl Mollath are reason enough to be afraid of psychiatry. Terrible things happen when there are systems in society that can easily be abused while having little oversight and accountability.

ncmncm 7y ago

"We didn't abandon lobotomy because we realised it was barbaric" Exactly the problem, right there. Many thousands of people were lobotomized not because they had severe, untreatable illnesses, but just because they were inconvenient. In only slightly more barbaric times and places they would be slaughtered or starved, as happened quite recently in China, Russia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Guatemala, Germany, ...

coldtea 7y ago

>I'm sorry, inserting an icepick through the eye then scrambling the brain behind it has a pretty well-deserved reputation as being barbaric. Wait till you hear about slashing the body with knives and cutting parts off then!

Mirioron 7y ago

>Lobotomy was crude and error-prone, but it was a lifesaving intervention for a substantial proportion of patients. But was that actually living and not just torture to please other people? My issue with psychiatry is that psychiatrists can force these things onto people. And when confronted about some of the terrible things done through that the answer is "but we are trying to help." People are fearful and suspicious of psychiatry because psychiatrists can basically imprison you and you have fewer rights than actual convicted prisoners. On top of that, if they get it wrong then there's no real accountability. While you're imprisoned, they can force you into many types of dangerous treatments and you have to obey. Cases like Gustl Mollath are reason enough to be afraid of psychiatry. Terrible things happen when there are systems in society that can easily be abused while having little oversight and accountability.