Soviet Mental health

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Hello,

I once heard that the soviets were far more tolerant of people with mental health problems compared to their western counterparts.

Like the Americans would use lots of invasive methods like lobotomies and electro shock, but the soviets wouldn’t?

Does anyone know any more on this? I find it really interesting.

Thanks

[bezdomni]

A Portugese neuroscientist named Egas Moniz was the first person to recommend the use of lobotomies on human patients. He got the idea from John Fulton (from Yale University), who removed the frontal lobes of 2 chimpanzees and noticed the drastic behavior changes.

The first labotomies and expirments with the frontal lobe occured in the 1930s. The research was a collaboration of French, Portugese, and American psychologists and neurologists.

The procedure was developed as an alternative to sending patients to asylums. Many were given the choice of a labotomy or an indefinite amount of time in a mental institution, and many of these people chose the knife. However, the labotomy met quite a bit of moral opposition.

Historically, the use of psychosurgery was much more popular in the United States than it was in Europe. It was even used in the United States to silence a political activist with "communist sympathies" (see Frances Farmer)! The less crude form of lobotomy had been developed by now. Ironically, it was called the "icepick lobotomy" (always reminds me of Trotsky).

In 1949 - over 500 lobotomies had occured in Texas alone!

Thankfully, the 1950s and 1960s saw a new era in psychological treatment. Psychopharmacology was developed (starting with the invention of chlorpromazine in 1952), thereby greatly diminishing the need for extremely invasive (and frequently unsuccessful) psychosurgeries, such as the lobotomy.

The World Psychiatry Congress of 1960 deemed the use of lobotomies and most psychosurgies useless. Nearly every single psychiatrist that had not already abandoned the labotomy did so after the congress.

Freeman performed his final lobotomy in 1967. His surgery privilege was revoked after killing the patient by rupturing a blood vessel in her brain.

It is probable that lobotomies are still used today, but only in very "backwards" countries, or by very bad doctors as a last resort.

Since the majority of lobotomies were conducted by American neurologists/psychologists, yes- the lobotmy was probably used substantially more in the US than the USSR. I have never read a report of lobotomies being used in the USSR, although it certainly seems plausible that they would have - considering it was very popular throughout the "dark ages" of psychotherapy.

Electric Shock therapy is different. It is openly used today, although it is very different than the old days of E.S. Therapy. It has been sucessfully used to treat disorders such as schizophrenia. Again, I have not read reports of Soviet psychologists being either good nor bad about using invasive or irrational treatments (mostly because I don't frequent Soviet psychological archives), and I am certain that Americans used lobotomies much more frequently. Electric Shock was probably utilized equally between the two countries.

You could probably find it somewhere else on the internet though.

Hope this helped/was interesting.