Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder (NMD), is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorders. Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. The modern history of psychosurgery begins in the 1880s under the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt. The first significant foray into psychosurgery in the 20th century was conducted by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz who, during the mid-1930s, developed the operation known as leucotomy. The practice was enthusiastically taken up in the United States by the neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman and the neurosurgeon James W. Watts who devised what became the standard prefrontal procedure and named their operative technique lobotomy, although the operation was called leucotomy in the United Kingdom. In spite of the award of the Nobel prize to Moniz in 1949, the use of psychosurgery declined during the 1950s. By the 1970s the standard Freeman-Watts type of operation was very rare, but other forms of psychosurgery, although used on a much smaller scale, survived. Some countries have abandoned psychosurgery altogether; in others, for example the US and the UK, it is only used in a few centres on small numbers of people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In some countries it is also used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other disorders.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or electroshock therapy (EST) is a psychiatric treatment during which a generalized seizure is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders. Typically, 70 to 120 volts are applied externally to the patient's head, resulting in approximately 800 milliamperes of direct current passing between the electrodes, for a duration of 100 milliseconds to 6 seconds, either from temple to temple or from front to back of one side of the head. However, only about 1% of the electrical current crosses the bony skull into the brain because skull impedance is about 100 times higher than skin impedance.
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in an American psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Alastair John Campbell is a British journalist, author, strategist, broadcaster, and activist, who is known for his political roles during Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party. Campbell worked as Blair's spokesman and campaign director in opposition (1994–1997), then as Downing Street Press Secretary, and as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesperson (1997–2000). He then became Downing Street's director of communications and spokesman for the Labour Party (2000–2003).
Richard Bentall is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.
The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment regarding the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication. The study was arranged by psychologist David Rosenhan, a Stanford University professor, and published by the journal Science in 1973 with the title On Being Sane In Insane Places.
The Atrocity Exhibition is an experimental novel of linked stories or "condensed novels" by British writer J. G. Ballard.
Works of fiction dealing with mental illness include:
Combat stress reaction (CSR) is acute behavioral disorganization as a direct result of the trauma of war. Also known as "combat fatigue", "battle fatigue", or "battle neurosis", it has some overlap with the diagnosis of acute stress reaction used in civilian psychiatry. It is historically linked to shell shock and can sometimes precurse post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Thanatos Syndrome (1987) was Walker Percy's last novel. It is a sequel to Love in the Ruins. Set in the near future in Feliciana, it tells the story of an imprisoned psychiatrist who is freed and returns to his town with the active members demonstrating new mysterious behaviors. He suspects that something or someone is making everyone in his town crazy and reversing them to be like primitive apes.
William Walters Sargant was a British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, sometimes abbreviated as DMSMH, is a book by L. Ron Hubbard about Dianetics, a pseudoscientific system that would later become part of Scientology. Hubbard claimed to have developed it from a combination of personal experience, basic principles of Eastern philosophy and the work of Sigmund Freud. The book is considered part of Scientology's canon. It is colloquially referred to by Scientologists as Book One. The book launched the movement, which later defined itself as a religion, in 1950. As of 2013, New Era Publications, the international publishing company of Hubbard's works, sells the book in English and in 50 other languages.
Since the founding of the Church of Scientology in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard, the relationship between Scientology and psychiatry has been dominated by strong opposition by the organization against the medical specialty of psychiatry and of psychology with themes relating to this opposition occurring repeatedly throughout Scientology literature and doctrine. According to the Church of Scientology, psychiatry has a long history of improper and abusive care. The group's views have been disputed, criticized, and condemned by experts in the medical and scientific community and have been a source of public controversy.
A war novel or military fiction is a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting, where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the effects of, or recovering from war. Many war novels are historical novels.
"O alienista" is a satiric novella written by the Brazilian author Machado de Assis (1839–1908). The story ran in Rio de Janeiro's newspaper A Estação, then was published in 1882 as part of the author's short-story collection Papéis avulsos. An English translation was published in 1963.
The Sorrows of an American is Siri Hustvedt's fourth novel. It was first published in 2008 and is about a Norwegian American family and their troubles. The novel is partly autobiographical in that Hustvedt herself is of Norwegian descent and in that passages from her own deceased father's journal about the Depression in America and the Pacific theatre of war during World War II are scattered through the book.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) is an anti-psychiatry lobbying organization established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, its stated mission is to "eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections." It is regarded by most non-Scientologists as a Scientology front group whose purpose is to push the organization's anti-psychiatry agenda.
Max Pemberton is a British medical doctor, journalist and author. He works full-time as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service (NHS). He is a weekly columnist for the Daily Mail, writing comment on news events concerning culture, social and ethical issues, the politics of health care and the NHS. Before his move to the Daily Mail, he was a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He also writes a monthly column for Reader’s Digest and is a regular contributor to The Spectator. He is the editor of Spectator Health, a quarterly supplement from The Spectator.
The Quickening Maze is a 2009 historical fiction novel by British poet and author Adam Foulds and published by Jonathan Cape. The book received the Encore Award (2009), European Union Prize for Literature (2011) and was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize (2009) and Walter Scott Prize (2010). The book is based on the historical backdrop of a mental asylum run by Matthew Allen at High Beach in late 1830s and 1840s which had English poet John Clare admitted therein. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, another notable poet of the era, moves to High Beach to get his brother Septimus treated. All the while, Alfred himself, has to overcome depression after the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam. The book narrates Clare's life, the asylum's effects on both poets and bases its storyline on the popular speculation of whether Clare and Tennyson had ever met.
