Another treatment for mental illness was to induce seizures using a simulant called Metrazol. The drug was injected, leading to a rapid seizure onset that was often severe enough to break the patient’s bones. This was used in the middle of the twentieth century but was banned in 1982 because it was both dangerous and not helpful to the patient. This was a precursor therapy to electroconvulsive treatments still used today to treat refractory depression. The frontal lobotomy was a common treatment for mental illness in the 1940s and 1950s. The goal was to break up brain pathways leading to mental illness. While these were used often, they were always controversial and were only used in severe cases. The prefrontal lobe was essentially separated from the rest of the brain in a procedure that took just minutes to do. The side effects were huge and debilitating so it was discontinued onc medical therapy was developed in its place. As for talk therapy, psychoanalysis became prominent at the start of the twentieth century. This was the beginning of a vast movement that has expanded to involve 400 different types of psychotherapy in use since then. As you will learn later, there are multiple different approaches that focus on things like cognition, behaviors, psychodynamic issues, and family systems approaches that help to provide a wide range of therapeutic options for every type of mental illness and personality type. Most approaches will work to some degree so you can expect treatment to be successful even if the approach is different. The first medical treatment for psychiatric diseases was developed in the middle of the twentieth century. There are now a number of psychotropic medications used today to manage diseases as diverse as psychosis, bipolar disorder, major depression, and substance use disorders. There were other treatments used through the 1970s that are now not used much at all because psychotropic medication is so successful in many cases.
MODELS OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Some things that came out of twentieth century thoughts on mental illness were those that dealt with mental hygiene and mental health rather than mental illness. The
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