Lobotomy Problem

Although one might assume that mental health problems are easy to fix, it is quite the opposite, as mental health is a very complex level of well-being that has challenged doctors for years in terms of treatment. Mary Jo Thomas, author of the article “Mental Health” in 2018, defines the topic as a “state of successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people, and the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity” (Thomas). In essence, Thomas describes how the role of mental health and stability supports daily life. Yet, mental health problems affect one in five adults, thus totaling to nearly 40,000,000 Americans (“State of Mental”). These problems include social anxiety,

The method was prominent during the mid 1930’s to the 1950’s (Tartakovsky). For, around 40,000 mentally ill patients underwent lobotomy procedures in the United States (Taylor). A lobotomy was a ten-minute surgical operation in which a doctor severed the nerve connections between the frontal lobes and other parts of the brain. One type of lobotomy involved drilling holes into the frontal cortex of the brain and injecting ethanol to destroy connecting fibers with the rest of the brain (Lewis). Walter Freeman and António Moniz, credited as the first physicians to carry out this procedure, performed up to twenty-five per day without anesthesia, making the operation very uncomfortable and brutal for the patient (Newt). Freeman also developed another type lobotomy that involved using an instrument similar to an ice pick. Freeman would insert this tool into the brain through the upper corner of the eye socket and cut the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes by moving the tool from side to side (Taylor). This surgical operation was very harsh and risky, as the patients were completely conscious and unmedicated, thus making it very inhuman. Further, the reasons for performing lobotomies fail to justify their

ECT was a technique in which one would shoot electricity through the forehead of a patient in order to induce a seizure. Psychiatrists placed electrodes on both sides of the patients skull and sent a jolt of electricity through the skull (Lilienfeld). This form of treatment ws completely barbaric, as patients who underwent ECT laid on a gurney, fully conscious, non-medicated and terrified. “It is unique among psychiatric treatments: a significant medical intervention requiring general anesthesia and entailing risks…” (Abrams). Patients would receive electroconvulsive therapy without any muscle relaxant or anesthetic, thus making the treatment very crude and uncomfortable. In reaction to the traumas that many psychiatric patients experienced, they would grimace in pain, thrash uncontrollably, and lapse into a stupor (Lilienfeld). Electroconvulsive Therapy was essentially a very aggressive, inhuman process, as it left many patients