More: Psychiatry’s History

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http://www.cchr.org/doctors/eng/page08.htm

 

More: Psychiatry's History

 

 

USING FORCE: Since its earliest days, psychiatry's methods have been

brutally invasive, using different applications of force to physically

and mentally overwhelm already disturbed individuals. As ar back as

the 1700s, those in charge of asylums insisted that their practices

were the only " workable methods. " However, these methods never cured,

they merely restrained and subdued. Little has changed. Today

psychiatrists still abuse human rights, and still insist that their

methods are superior. Yet 300 years later, with psychiatry no closer

to understanding the cause of or achieving a cure for mental trauma,

their methods routinely harm troubled individuals.

 

FEARFUL TREATMENTS: Historically, treatment has included flogging,

chaining patients to the wall or restraining them in a wall camisole

or straitjacket (1); surprising them with a sudden drop into cold

water (2); locking them up in various devices like this cage-like crib

(3); or rotating them a hundred times a minute in " swivel chairs " (4).

Other treatments used instruments such as this " ovary compressor "

(used to subdue hysterical women) (5).

 

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHIATRY uses psychosurgery, electroshock (ECT) and

psychoactive drugs as its three main treatments (6–7). Medical studies

show ECT can leave irreversible brain damage. It can also cause

confusion of time and space orientation and permanent loss of memory.

Psychosurgery excises healthy portions of the brain and can cause

memory loss, disorientation and destruction of basic social skills (8).

 

 

" OPERATION ICE PICK "

 

On September 14, 1936, U.S. psychiatrist Walter J. Freeman performed

his first lobotomy. Using electric shock as an anesthetic, he inserted

an ice pick beneath the eye socket bone into the brain with a surgical

mallet. Movement of the instrument then severed the fibers of the

frontal brain lobes, causing irreversible brain damage.

 

Between 1946 and 1949 the lobotomies increased tenfold. Freeman

himself performed or supervised approximately 3,500 procedures. By

1948, the death rate from lobotomies was 3 percent. Yet Freeman toured

from city to city, promoting his procedure by lecturing and publicly

lobotomizing patients in theatrical fashion. The press dubbed his tour

" Operation Ice Pick. "