Abuses are not in the Past

Report Criticizes Calif. Mental Hospital

SAN FRANCISCO - Patients at a state mental hospital overdosed on illegal drugs, were improperly restrained for hours on end and were forced to spend 12 hours in soiled diapers, according to a scathing report issued by the U.S. Justice Department.

The report said the problems were among "widespread and systematic deficiencies" at Napa State Hospital, including suicide and inadequate medical care. Some patients were bathed only every two to four weeks, the report said.
...
The Justice Department investigation began in January 2004. The California Department of Mental Health has refused to cooperate, repeatedly preventing access to the facility, said the letter from Bradley J. Schlozman, acting assistant attorney general. A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
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Restraints and seclusion also are overused at Napa, according to the Justice Department. The report cited one patient who was restrained for 369 consecutive hours.

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Words of Wisdom

"Historical records fail to explain some astounding errors of judgment. Witness the 1949 prize in physiology or medicine, shared by neuroscientist Antonio Egas Moniz for his development in 1935 of the prefrontal lobotomy. The jury failed to appreciate how widely discredited the procedure had become by the time it tapped Moniz. It was a terrible mistake that caused permanent damage to thousands of patients," says 1981 physiology or medicine laureate Torsten Wiesel of Rockefeller University in New York City."

http://tinyurl.com/bqdfr

Read an excellent article about this here

Let the promiscous suffer!

Sue K. sent this to me:
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This comes from a book called "Surgery of the Mind" by Eric A Turner published in 1982, Carmen Press, Birmingham.

Turner was a neurosurgeon who carried out psychosurgical operations in Birmingham and the book is about the 342 people he operated on in the 1960s and 1970s, but that included some people who were operated on for epilepsy not psychiatric symptoms.

"A decline in moral standards was not a significant feature in post-operative cases. Where promiscuity, or prostitution or moral delinquincy was known before illness, the case would not be considered for frontal operations, and the psychiatrists were seldom caught out on this score. Certain inoffensive attitudes that did not impinge on any serious moral principles were not a bar. A number of women patients were, or became, barmaids." p 64

"There had been stories of women taking to prostitution after lobotomy, so sexual laxity was considered a contra-indication to surgery. These decisions were taken in an epoch when sexual moral standards were narrower than they are today, so the decision appeared at that time easier than it would be now. Promiscuity was sufficient to preclude operation, in the belief it would be unacceptably vigorous afterwards." p 71

10 percent were helped

I see the headline that the U.S. media has now seized is that lobotomy "helped 10% of all patients". Of course I don't agree that even 10% were helped, but let's humor them for a moment. If that number is to be believed then conversely 90% of all of the lobotomies were a failure.

I wonder how many would have consented if they knew that lobotomy had an estimated 90% failure rate?

Lobotomy impact lingers

This is from today's Newsday:

Lobotomy impact lingersGranddaughter of LI woman who had the procedure in the 1950s is pressing the Nobel committee to rescind its prize to the inventor

BY JAMIE TALAN

When Christine Johnson was a little girl and learned her grandmother was "crazy" and that a lobotomy had left her "childlike," she pulled out her Barbies so Grandma Beulah could play."No, dear, I'm too old for that," her grandmother said.

Now, more than two decades later, Johnson, 32, has pored over hundreds of pages of her grandmother's medical and psychiatric files from her time as a patient at Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood from 1952 to 1972.

She has attempted to understand why doctors performed the procedure, which involved drilling holes into her brain and swiping at the frontal lobes. It was thought to be a cure for psychosis.

Johnson, of Levittown, also is challenging the 1949 Nobel Prize awarded to Portuguese Dr. Egas Moniz, who invented the lobotomy procedure. Moniz died in 1955, and soon after, the procedure began to be discredited.

continued

WVTS - Jerry Waters

Tomorrow at 11:00 AM Eastern Time Jack El Hai and I will be on the Jerry Waters show on the West Virginia radio station WVTS.

New England Journal of Medicine

Hey, we're mentioned in the New England Journal of Medicine. You'll need a subscription to see the full-text article.

Last-Ditch Medical Therapy — Revisiting Lobotomy

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So thought Walter J. Freeman, a neurologist who became the United States's staunchest advocate of the lobotomy between the 1930s and the 1970s. A new book, The Lobotomist, by journalist Jack El-Hai,1 chronicles Freeman's advocacy of a procedure that was viewed by many, and continues to be viewed, as barbaric. In exploring the ways in which lobotomy became part of common medical practice, El-Hai raises questions not only about how we should judge the procedure in retrospect, but also about what lobotomy teaches us about last-ditch medical interventions.

Struggle for Justice

Psychosurgery.org is deeply gratified by the overwhelming positive response to the Associated Press article. If you are as shocked as we are by the Nobel Foundation's snarky attitude, and as upset by the way they are dodging responsibility in this matter, please write them at comments@nobel.se and tell them that the only decent thing to do is REVOKE Egas Moniz's Nobel Prize.

To any Nobel Laureates that are reading this - please contact Christine at christine@psychosurgery.org and tell us what you think of this situation. We think that the Nobel Prize for lobotomy sullies all of the other Prizes. You should not have to be associated with a human rights violation like psychosurgery. We hope that you will support us in our struggle for justice. We need your help.

Thank you to all the kind people out there ...

Rest in Peace Mr. Shaw

I'm posting this because the man in the story was a lobotomy victim:

A HUMAN skeleton found in the field in Holywell had to be identified by scars on the bones on the remains.

Mystery will forever surround the death of Ronald Shaw, 71, who disappeared from his home in Ellesmere Port on July 28 last year.

Mr Shaw (pictured), an ex-serviceman, was a diagnosed schizophrenic and was commonly known as a wanderer.

...

Mr Raymond Shaw described his brother as very fastidious and had a particular peculiarity in that he would keep a running diary of his daily events. A vital piece of evidence in identifying the body was the scarring on the skull from a lucotomy (lobotomy) operation Mr Shaw had undergone as a child.

read the rest

I Can't Help but Smile

Thank you Tom Cruise - I have thoroughly enjoyed watching all the hoopla surrounding your stand against psychiatry. People are talking. They are thinking. It's very exciting.

I take back saying that I wish you'd be quiet about it. I hope you never shut up about it.

Salon went all twitchy in today's edition. It is quite a hatchet job that is heavy on invective (the scientology anti-drug program is described as having "infiltrated" the area schools) and short on actual discussion. For example, they claim that scientology has opportunistically jumped on the anti-Ritalin bandwagon, but they don't address the fact that many people who would never dream of joining an alternate religion legitimately feel that Ritalin is seriously over prescribed. In other words, you don't have to be a scientologist to be deeply suspicious of psychiatry.

Brooke Shields came out with a response in the New York Times today too. She wrote:

In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body.

Brooke - the cause of post partum depression and psychosis has not been proved no matter what your shrink told you. Under the heading "Causes, incidence, and risk factors" of postpartum depression the National Library of Medicine lists the following:

You have a higher chance of post-partum depression if:

• You had mood or anxiety disorders prior to pregnancy, including depression with a previous pregnancy
• You have a close family member who has had depression or anxiety
• Anything particularly stressful happened to you during the pregnancy, including illness, death or illness of a loved one, a difficult or emergency delivery, premature delivery, or illness or abnormality in the baby
• You are in your teens or over age 30
• The pregnancy is unwanted or unplanned
• You currently abuse alcohol, take illegal substances, or smoke -- these are also serious medical health risks for the baby

Nary a word about serotonin. In fact, most of the listings are emotional factors. Interesting.