by Allison Gifford

  
In the past, psychiatric treatments were often crazier than the patients they were supposed to cure. The profession has come a long way since insanity was treated with bloodletting and electro-shock--or has it? Here's a look at therapy's highs and lows from the middle ages to the new millennium. 

1600s The devil and his wacky minions are the number one cause of insanity in England. Most cures, however, rely heavily on magic--not exactly kosher with the Puritan crowd. After a while, the orthodox elite has had enough of those unsightly apothecaries running around rubbing their amulets and decides to repudiate spiritual healing altogether.

1700s Doctors prescribe an array of wonderful remedies such as emetics, laxatives, vomits, phlebotomies and leeches to suck, drain or puke madness from its hosts. Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the last practitioners of medieval medicine, makes therapeutic bloodletting fashionable among North American psychiatrists. Rush invents his own line of blood-extracting tools, such as "cupping" devices that look like turkey basters and his own special bleeding knife. The knife is eventually yanked from the market when a patient discovers it on his psychiatrist's desk and stabs him with it.

Late 1700s German psychiatrist Johann Reil invents the Hollow Wheel. Patients are made to spend 36 to 48 hours trying to run their crazies out on this giant hamster wheel. After providing years of low-cost entertainment for orderlies, the Hollow Wheel is denounced as inhumane in the early 19th century. 

1800s Cuffs, belts and straitjackets are used in conjunction with the scads of cheap hard drugs flooding the market. Dover's Powder (a whole lot of ground opium and a little bit of talc) becomes the first patented drug at the beginning of the century. It's used to treat hysteria, but is also prescribed for general aches and pains. Cocaine is also a popular psychiatric drug, and patent drugmakers ensure that the "brain and nerve tonic" finds its way into everything from cough candy to soda pop.

1880 Physicians begin using electromechanical vibrators to treat female hysteria.

1896 Hydrotherapy is frequently used in asylums across North America. Patients are repeatedly dunked head-first into ice water until they reach a state of calm. The wet sheet pack, which involves rolling patients in cold wet sheets, is also commended for its soothing powers.

1900 Freud's Interpretation of Dreams revolutionizes psychiatry. 

Early 1900s Canadian psychiatry is greatly influenced by the American "mental hygiene" movement. Its pioneering psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Kirk Clarke, suggests taking eugenic actions (including sterilization, marriage laws and immigration restrictions) to decrease the hereditary transmission of insanity. 

1920 Psychiatrist Jakob Klasi gains recognition for sleep therapy. Used to calm hysterical patients, the treatment consists of six to eight days of barbiturate-induced sleep.

1927 Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach develops the Rorschach test. Patients' interpretations of ink blots are used to form personality assessments.

1934 Carl Jung publishes Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, describing the shadow, anima, animus and self that govern the unconscious. Jung is one of the first psychoanalysts to disagree with Freud's theory that social behaviour is a result of sublimation of sexual instincts.

1938 Dr. Ugo Cerletti is the first to use electroshock therapy on patients with schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis. The therapy is later found to be ineffective for schizophrenia, but--despite controversy--is still used today to treat serious catatonic depression. 

1941 Erich Fromm expands the study of social behaviour in Escape from Freedom. Writing during heavy Nazi repression, Fromm is especially aware that environment has a great impact on behaviour. Fromm's psychoanalysis moves away from Freud's sexual suppression theory and instead looks to social processes to explain behavioural patterns.

1948 Lobotomies are commonly used in asylums for treatment of the clinically insane. The practice continues through the fifties when it is rendered obsolete by Thorazine and other anti-psychotic drugs.

1950s LSD is touted as a drug capable of producing a temporary "model psychosis," and LSD clinics are opened around the world. The clinical testing of LSD in psychiatric hospitals is backed by the CIA, in hopes that the drug can be used as a truth serum. The Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal receives CIA funding for acid tests administered by Dr. Ewen Cameron, the institute's director and the chair of the McGill Department of Psychiatry. 

1952 French surgeon Henri Laborit discovers the first anti-psychotic drug, Chlorpromazine (Thorazine). Within two years, it is available worldwide, revolutionizing the treatment of schizophrenia.

1960s Oversexed housewives raise their spatulas to the heavens with glee as "mother's little helper"--Valium-- becomes widely available. 

1960s Doctors begin prescribing Ritalin to treat "hyperkinesis" in children. Also called "Minimal Brain Dysfunction," its chief symptoms are "restlessness, impulsiveness and garrulousness which disrupt discipline in the home and in the classroom." 

1970 The demand for mental health services is so intense post-World War II that the American Medical Association finally relents and allows psychologists to do limited amounts of therapy. The result is a radical departure from traditional psychiatric treatment, with increased emphasis on existential and humanistic psychology. Shortly thereafter, pop psychology descends on North America in a feel-good cloud of kitsch, birthing such notorious one-liners as "I'm OK, you're OK," and rejuvenating the late-night infomercial careers of dumpy sitcom stars for years to come.

1973 The American Psychiatric Association deletes homosexuality from the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 

1980 Attention Deficit Disorder is recognized as a disease by the American Psychiatric Association.

1988 Nine plaintiffs accept out-of-court settlements from the CIA for the cruel experimentation they underwent in the 1950s at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal. The plaintiffs were subject to "de-patterning" therapy which included barbiturate-induced sleep, subcoma insulin treatment, electroshock therapy and heavy intravenous injections of LSD. 

1988 Eli Lilly launches Prozac, the world's most widely prescribed anti-depressant. Reported side effects include nausea, diarrhea, insomnia, lowered sex drive, daytime fatigue, sweating, headaches, weight loss, weight gain, tremors and violent behaviour.

1989 Joseph T. Westbecker, a psychiatric patient on Prozac, opens fire on 20 of his co-workers before killing himself. Eli Lilly is accused of knowingly manufacturing and marketing a drug that causes agitation in certain individuals, and for failing to provide the appropriate package warnings. At the time of trial in 1994, Prozac accounts for one-third of the company's $6.5 billion in annual revenues. Eli Lilly wins the case, but the judge later publishes a motion claiming that the company had made a secret payment to the plaintiff. 

1990s Despite a little bad press, serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac prove to be a pharmaceutical goldmine. A patenting frenzy ensues as drug companies rush to expand the SSRI family. Drugs like Zoloft, Effexor, Paxil, Serzone and Celexa burst on the market to challenge Prozac. 

1992 The Defeat Depression Campaign is launched by the UK's Royal College of Psychiatrists. The group publishes literature suggesting that one-third of the population will suffer from a depressive disorder at some point in their life. The campaign's heaviest financial backer is the pharmaceutical industry. 

1998 The World Health Organization estimates that depression is the fourth leading cause of the international "disease burden." 

2001 Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder expands to include 600 chapters and 35,000 members worldwide. CHADD has received nearly $1 million in support from Ritalin manufacturer Ciba Geigy.

2001 Eli Lilly's lucrative patent on Prozac comes to an end in August, allowing other manufacturers to sell generic versions of the drug for a fraction of the price. The company repatents Prozac as Serafem, a treatment for women suffering from Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, and has already spent $2.3 billion in marketing the drug under its new name. 

source: 
THIS MAGAZINE online 
thismagazine.ca