Preview

Psychosurgery Controversy

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
147 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Psychosurgery Controversy
Psychosurgery, since the beginning its evolution has always been a controversial medical debate because of its involvement with the severing and disabling of areas within the brain as a option to treat personality and behavior disorders, as well as other mental illnesses. In 1891, Dr. Gottlieh Burckhardt, Swiss Psychiatrist, reported the first use of “modern” psychosurgery after performing cerebral excisions on six patients severely suffering from chronic mania, dementia and primäre Verrücktheit (primary paranoid psychosis) in 1888. After the six surgical procedures performed by Dr. Gottlieh Burckhardt, one patient experienced ongoing manic episodes and committed suicide as a result. The other five patients, while alive, showed little to no

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    H. M Case Study Essay

    • 680 Words
    • 3 Pages

    was twenty seven, he was sent to one of the founders of the Department of Neurosurgery, Mr. Scoville. He was sent here because he was completely unresponsive to his anti-convulsant drugs that he was given. H.M was going to get surgery done on his brain at the Hartford Hospital. Scoville had been experimenting with this surgery for treating psychosis. Scoville then performed an experimental surgical procedure on H.M. which was called a bilateral medial temporal lobe resection. This procedure involved removing big parts of the temporal lobe from both brain hemispheres. The amygdala and about two thirds of the hippocampus was removed (Costandi, 2007). In my opinion, I do not think that this procedure should have been done until preliminary experiments had been done before to make sure that that there were no negative outcomes from this…

    • 680 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bus Driver, Howard Dully, in his memoir, “My Lobotomy” recounts his heartbreaking life after receiving a lobotomy when he was just 12 years old. Dully’s purpose is to raise awareness and share his riveting story about the after effects of having ice picks stabbed into his brain. He adopts an effective tone in order to aid, and inform readers of all ages about mental illness, family abuse and the corrupt past of American Psychiatry.…

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dully is one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital or “ice pick” lobotomy (Howard Dully) which was performed by Dr. Walter Freeman, a neurologist who was accredited in the field of psychosurgery. In hopes of finding a “cure” for her stepson, Lou sought the expertise of doctors and psychologists. All six of the psychiatrists that she consulted reported that Howard was a typical, normal boy. Out of those six, four of them even stated that she was the problem. (Grimes, 2007) Freeman on the other hand, came to the conclusion that Howard was schizophrenic and a prime candidate for lobotomy. Freeman began this permanent procedure first by giving Howard a few shocks of electro-shock in order to sedate him. The actual procedure only took approximately 10 minutes. In his clinical notes, Freeman wrote “I introduced the orbitoclasts under the eyelids 3 cm from the midline, aimed them parallel with the nose and drove them a depth of 5 cm,” then “pulled the handles laterally, and returned them halfway and drove them 2 cm deeper.” (Three Rivers Press, 2008) He then swirled the instrument around in a sort of eggbeater motion which severed the prefrontal cortex and underlying structures.(The Rise and Fall of Prefrontal…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Congratulations, you just performed a Prefrontal Lobotomy, which is a practice a little more common than most would like to admit but, it is only one of the many horrendous tortures that awaited patients who were committed to mental asylums in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Psy 310 Week 2 Dq 1

    • 533 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Prior to the Renaissance period, Enlightenment thinkers urged the reformation of treating mental illnesses, which many treatments were used that today would be looked at as appalling or astounding in treating the mentally ill. German doctor Johann Weyer (1515-1588), the first physician to specialize in mental illness, believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body was (Comer, 2011). According to Goodwin (2008), Phillipe Pinel (1745-1826) introduced humane reforms in Paris, which established the asylum (type of institution that first became popular in the 16th century to provide care for those with mental disorders, which became virtual prisons) for both men and women known as Bircêtre asylum (1793) and Salpêtrière asylum (1795). Pinel also introduced “moral treatment” to improve institutional living conditions, reduction of physical restraint of patients, and improvement of patient 's behavior. At the same time, Benjamin Rush introduced a medical model explaining mental illness and also developed an approach to treat and emphasize “improving” the condition of patients’ blood and circulatory system, which advocated the “bloodletting” as a cure. He believed that in order to reduce the hypertension in the brain 's blood vessels, blood should be removed through the opening of the veins until a person reaches a tranquil state. Rush also created two devices to calm the blood, which included the gyrator and the tranquilizer to redistribute blood toward the head and reduce pulse rate (Goodwin, 2008).…

    • 533 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Individual who were having illusions or were delusional had a hole drilled in their skull in order to get rid of the spirits. If that person was still alive, the procedure was successful…

    • 10202 Words
    • 41 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Often called “The Father of Modern Psychiatry,” he composed the first textbook regarding diseases of the mind. He personally believed that the causes of mental disabilities were complications with the blood vessels in the brain (Ozarin). Unlike most people of his time, he pursued medical treatment for patients because he did not accredit their mental diseases to moral offenses. “Mental illness [must] be freed from moral stigma, and be treated with medicine rather than moralizing” (“Pennsylvania Hospital History…”). Rush’s career and medical intentions were to humanize the way that patients in the psychiatric ward were treated (“Benjamin Rush…”). These methods included, hot and cold baths, bleeding, purging, and some of his own invention: the tranquilizer chair, which was put in place of the straitjacket while still coercing the patient to complete a specific task that they would not normally do based on their psychological condition, and the gyrator which was, “based on the principle of centrifugal action to increase cerebral circulation…” (“Benjamin Rush…”). Benjamin Rush was the first man in America to put the needs of the patient first and he was the man who actually reformed the manner of which patients in mental hospitals were…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Psychoanalysis theory first came to be around the late 1800’s, discovered by the renowned theorist Sigmund Freud, also known as the father of the theory. Freud was born in Moravia in 1856; he studied under Charcot in Paris for a while, eventually starting a private practice in Vienna, being forced to leave by the Nazis, because he was Jewish. His concept developed from people who were considered to be hysteric, being burnt and ridiculed, because they were seen as lazy and deviant. Later on in the 19th century, theorists began to grasp an understanding of the mental illness and termed it as neuropathology, which evolved into Psychoanalysis. This theory sought to treat mental disorders by investigating interactions amongst the conscious and…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Miss

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages

    There are many different methods of cortical specialisation and these are: MRI scan, PET scan, Electroencephalogram, Post Mortem and Neurosurgery. These are developed methods of studying cortical specialisation in the brain in order to be able to predict, control and explain non –human and human behaviour. Neurosurgery is considered to be an invasive way of investigating cortical specialisation as it involves manipulating structures within the brain. There are two ways in which neurosurgery can be performed and these are lesions which is a surgical procedure used to cut neural connections in the brain, and ablation which is a surgical procedure used to remove areas of the brain. Post mortem studies are a research method of the brain of a patient, who has had something wrong with them such as struggling to speak, so this is examined after death. There are also used in police force and crime investigations to see how the person has died. EEG is a non – invasive measurement which is electrical activity of the brain which is produced by recording from electrodes which are placed on the individuals scalp. A PET scan is a procedure where the brain is assessed in various locations depending on different level of neural activity whilst the brain is active; likewise the MRI scan is taken whilst the brain is active and is where scanners use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce an image of the brain of an individual.…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the invasive methods of cortical specialisation is neurosurgery. It involves manipulating with the structures within the brain. There are two main ways of performing neurosurgery: ablation, which is a surgical procedure used to remove certain areas of the brain, and lesioning, which is cutting neural connections within the brain. An advantage of using neurosurgery, is that it allows for a lot of control and detail in the location of faults within the brain. On the other hand, cutting neural connections, or removing certain parts of the brain, may damage other ones, which may lead to a more severe consequence.…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Phelbotomy has made a lot of changes now with technology . According to an article that was written by anymous in the Clinical Labortatory Science Journal,”Phlebotomy is more accurately defined now as a bloodletting by incision of a vein or skin puncture for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.” Certified (ANOMYUS, 1999) I think these changes are great and are very helpful in performing veinpunctures on patients.…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Psychic Vampires

    • 5007 Words
    • 21 Pages

    Psychic surgery - Removal of diseased body tissue via an incision that heals immediately afterwards.[12]…

    • 5007 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the 1900s people viewed mental illness as a disease of individual weakness or a spiritual disease, in which the mentally ill were sent to asylums. This was a temporary solution in hope to remove “lunatics” from the community. This caused a severe overcrowding, which led to a decline in patient care and reviving the old procedures and medical treatments. Early treatments to cure mental illness were really forms of torture. Asylums used wrist and ankle restraints, ice water baths, shock machines, straightjackets, electro-convulsive therapy, even branding patients, and the notorious lobotomy and “bleeding practice”. These early treatments seen some improvement in patients, although today this eras method of handling the mentally ill is considered barbaric, the majority of people were content because the “lunatics” were no longer visible in society.…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The hospitals were often over populated and the patients were mistreated. Rooms designed for one to two patients, usually held four to five patients. Doctor’s diagnosis were often inaccurate, and the forms of treatment used were inhumane. The practice of Phrenology was introduced by, Franz Joseph Gall, a neuroanatomies, who believed that there was a connection between the size and shape of your skull, and your mental characteristics. A doctor would run their fingertips over a person’s head, to find bumps in the person’s skull.…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    A nonprofit organization in New York has an admirable mission, to provide free plastic surgery for low-income children who have facial deformities. Some of the kids who apply to the Little Baby Face Foundation do so because they are being teased over their looks. But is plastic surgery a smart way to help bullying victims? (Dahl 1). Being able to go out in public or walk down the school hallways with confidence is all a teen could ask for that’s what Dr. Thomas Romo delivers at The Little Baby Face Foundation, giving teens with facial deformities their dream face.…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays