Interview with Elliot Valenstein
Okay, so this thing is old. It's still very interesting. Dr. Valenstein wrote "Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Fall of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness".
-----------------------------------------------------
Better Living Through Lobotomy: What can the history of psychosurgery tell us about medicine today?
An Interview with Elliot Valenstein
[ by Allison Xantha Miller ]
STAY FREE!: It seems that in the 1930s, when Egas Moniz was doing the first lobotomies on humans, treating mental illness was urgent for some reason. The new "somatic" treatments--not only lobotomy but insulin comas and electroshock treatments [see sidebar]--weren’t just a way to help individuals, they were seen as something that could help solve a great social crisis.
VALENSTEIN: Well, there was a social crisis, you’re right. Mental institutions, particularly state institutions and large governmental institutions in all countries, were becoming more and more overcrowded because there weren’t any treatments for serious mental illness. They would try anything that held out hope and wasn’t very costly. Mostly it was somatic treatments, which people grasped at as a way of getting patients to a point where they could go home. Governments were concerned about the rising costs of taking care of the mentally ill, making legislators and the superintendents of institutions very receptive to anyone who claimed that insulin treatment, electroconvulsive shock, or fever treatment would cure schizophrenia. These somatic treatments tended to be much less costly and less labor intensive [than psychoanalysis].
STAY FREE!: Why were so many people in mental hospitals?
VALENSTEIN: Lots of people were mentally ill, just as there are many today. But now they tend to be treated with drugs and outpatient care. If all of these people were institutionalized, we would have the same kind of problem. Also, there were some patients who were committed more for the convenience of the husband or the family--wives who became mentally ill and troublesome. But I think mainly it was that there’s always a baseline number of mentally ill, and they kept accumulating in institutions.
read the rest ... it's really interesting ...
-----------------------------------------------------
Better Living Through Lobotomy: What can the history of psychosurgery tell us about medicine today?
An Interview with Elliot Valenstein
[ by Allison Xantha Miller ]
STAY FREE!: It seems that in the 1930s, when Egas Moniz was doing the first lobotomies on humans, treating mental illness was urgent for some reason. The new "somatic" treatments--not only lobotomy but insulin comas and electroshock treatments [see sidebar]--weren’t just a way to help individuals, they were seen as something that could help solve a great social crisis.
VALENSTEIN: Well, there was a social crisis, you’re right. Mental institutions, particularly state institutions and large governmental institutions in all countries, were becoming more and more overcrowded because there weren’t any treatments for serious mental illness. They would try anything that held out hope and wasn’t very costly. Mostly it was somatic treatments, which people grasped at as a way of getting patients to a point where they could go home. Governments were concerned about the rising costs of taking care of the mentally ill, making legislators and the superintendents of institutions very receptive to anyone who claimed that insulin treatment, electroconvulsive shock, or fever treatment would cure schizophrenia. These somatic treatments tended to be much less costly and less labor intensive [than psychoanalysis].
STAY FREE!: Why were so many people in mental hospitals?
VALENSTEIN: Lots of people were mentally ill, just as there are many today. But now they tend to be treated with drugs and outpatient care. If all of these people were institutionalized, we would have the same kind of problem. Also, there were some patients who were committed more for the convenience of the husband or the family--wives who became mentally ill and troublesome. But I think mainly it was that there’s always a baseline number of mentally ill, and they kept accumulating in institutions.
read the rest ... it's really interesting ...
posted by Christine at Tuesday, January 25, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home