My earliest insight exposure to mental illness might be the famous movie "A Beautiful Mind", which describes the life of math genius John Nash, who struggled with his schizophrenia for tens of years. Doctor Nash regarded himself secretly appointed by U.S. government to find out clues of Soviet Union's invasion. He was then forcedly to receive mental illness treatments, including pills and electroshock therapy. I remembered a scene in which Nash was tied to the bed and a doctor gave him electric shocks. The scene was so thrilling that I could still hear his screaming in my mind. However, Nash didn't turn any better even after rounds of treatments.
Is this treatment good for Nash's schizophrenia? Or put it another way, should we treat mental illnesses, and how
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Despite many successful biomedical treatments, through the history, many crude and abusive treatments have once been adopted in the name of medical science. The electroshock treatment that John Nash received, for instance, was invented by Ladislas Meduna to treat schizophrenia and epilepsy in 1934. The treatment was soon widely all over the world because it was cheap, less frightening and convenient. Later experiments have shown that, while significant improvements could be found after several treatments, it also brought severe negative side effects including memory disturbance and confusion. Criticism arose towards drawbacks such as noted side effects, abusive medical and physical treatments, and uneven application of electroshock therapy (Blowig, 2011). The controversial point is that, should we treat mentally ill patients, at the cost of crude and abusive treatment? The problem becomes even more complicated under the circumstance that patients might not have full information of the side effects, and it’s possible that they are forced to receive such treatments without any other