Insulin shock therapy | |
---|---|
ICD-9-CM | 94.24 |
MeSH | D003295 |
Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks. [1] It was introduced in 1927 by Austrian-American psychiatrist Manfred Sakel and used extensively in the 1940s and 1950s, mainly for schizophrenia, before falling out of favour and being replaced by neuroleptic drugs in the 1960s. [2]
It was one of a number of physical treatments introduced into psychiatry in the first four decades of the 20th century. These included the convulsive therapies (cardiazol/metrazol therapy and electroconvulsive therapy), deep sleep therapy, and psychosurgery. Insulin coma therapy and the convulsive therapies are collectively known as the shock therapies.
In 1927, Sakel, who had recently qualified as a medical doctor in Vienna and was working in a psychiatric clinic in Berlin, began to use low (sub-coma) doses of insulin to treat drug addicts and psychopaths, and when one of the patients experienced improved mental clarity after having slipped into an accidental coma, Sakel reasoned the treatment might work for mentally ill patients. [3] Having returned to Vienna, he treated schizophrenic patients with larger doses of insulin in order to deliberately produce coma and sometimes convulsions. [3] Sakel made his results public in 1933, and his methods were soon taken up by other psychiatrists. [3]
Joseph Wortis, after seeing Sakel practice it in 1935, introduced it to the US. British psychiatrists from the Board of Control visited Vienna in 1935 and 1936, and by 1938, 31 hospitals in England and Wales had insulin treatment units. [2] In 1936, Sakel moved to New York and promoted the use of insulin coma treatment in US psychiatric hospitals. [3] By the late 1940s, the majority of psychiatric hospitals in the US were using insulin coma treatment. [4]
Insulin coma therapy was a labour-intensive treatment that required trained staff and a special unit. [2] Patients, who were almost invariably diagnosed with schizophrenia, were selected on the basis of having a good prognosis and the physical strength to withstand an arduous treatment. [5] There were no standard guidelines for treatment. Different hospitals and psychiatrists developed their own protocols. [5] Typically, injections were administered six days a week for about two months. [1]
The daily insulin dose was gradually increased to 100–150 units (1 unit = 34.7 μg [6] ) until comas were produced, at which point the dose would be levelled out. [1] Occasionally doses of up to 450 units were used. [7] After about 50 or 60 comas, or earlier if the psychiatrist thought that maximum benefit had been achieved, the dose of insulin was rapidly reduced before treatment was stopped. [5] [8] Courses of up to 2 years have been documented. [8]
After the insulin injection patients would experience various symptoms of decreased blood glucose: flushing, pallor, perspiration, salivation, drowsiness or restlessness. [8] Sopor and coma—if the dose was high enough—would follow. [8] Each coma would last for up to an hour and be terminated by intravenous glucose or via naso-gastric tube. [1] Seizures occurred before or during the coma. [9] Many would be tossing, rolling, moaning, twitching, spasming or thrashing around. [5]
Some psychiatrists regarded seizures as therapeutic and patients were sometimes also given electroconvulsive therapy or cardiazol/metrazol convulsive therapy during the coma, or on the day of the week when they didn't have insulin treatment. [8] [9] When they were not in a coma, insulin coma patients were kept together in a group and given special treatment and attention. One handbook for psychiatric nurses, written by British psychiatrist Eric Cunningham Dax, instructs nurses to take their insulin patients out walking and occupy them with games and competitions, flower-picking and map-reading, etc. [10] Patients required continuous supervision as there was a danger of hypoglycemic aftershocks after the coma. [2]
In "modified insulin therapy", used in the treatment of neurosis, patients were given lower (sub-coma) doses of insulin. [8]
A few psychiatrists (including Sakel) claimed success rates for insulin coma therapy of over 80% in the treatment of schizophrenia. [11] A few others argued that it merely accelerated remission in those patients who were undergoing remission anyway. The consensus at the time was somewhere in between, claiming a success rate of about 50% in patients who had been ill for less than a year (about double the spontaneous remission rate) with no influence on relapse. [3] [12]
Sakel suggested the therapy worked by "causing an intensification of the tonus of the parasympathetic end of the autonomic nervous system, by blockading the nerve cell, and by strengthening the anabolic force which induces the restoration of the normal function of the nerve cell and the recovery of the patient." [3] The shock therapies in general had developed on the erroneous premise that epilepsy and schizophrenia rarely occurred in the same patient. The premise was supported by neuropathologic studies that found a dearth of glia in the brains of schizophrenic patients and a surplus of glia in epileptic brains. These observations led the Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas Meduna to induce seizures in schizophrenic patients with injections of camphor, soon replaced by pentylenetetrazol (Metrazole). [13] Another theory was that patients were somehow "jolted" out of their mental illness. [14]
The hypoglycemia (pathologically low glucose levels) that resulted from insulin coma therapy made patients extremely restless, sweaty, and liable to further convulsions and "after-shocks". In addition, patients invariably emerged from the long course of treatment "grossly obese", [5] probably due to glucose rescue-induced glycogen storage disease. The most severe risks of insulin coma therapy were death and brain damage, resulting from irreversible or prolonged coma respectively. [1] [7] A study at the time claimed that many of the cases of brain damage were actually therapeutic improvement because they showed "loss of tension and hostility". [15] Mortality risk estimates varied from about 1% [2] to 4.9%. [16]
Respected singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt was said to have lost much of his long-term memory from this treatment, performed on him for bipolar disorder, preceding a life of substance abuse and depression. [17]
Insulin coma therapy was used in most hospitals in the US and the UK during the 1940s and 1950s. The numbers of patients were restricted by the requirement for intensive medical and nursing supervision and the length of time it took to complete a course of treatment. For example, at one typical large British psychiatric hospital, Severalls Hospital in Essex, insulin coma treatment was given to 39 patients in 1956. In the same year, 18 patients received modified insulin treatment, while 432 patients were given electroconvulsive treatment. [18]
In 1953, British psychiatrist Harold Bourne published a paper entitled "The insulin myth" in the Lancet , in which he argued that there was no sound basis for believing that insulin coma therapy counteracted the schizophrenic process in a specific way. If treatment worked, he said, it was because patients were chosen for their good prognosis and were given special treatment: "insulin patients tend to be an elite group sharing common privileges and perils". [19] Prior to publishing "The insulin myth" in The Lancet, Bourne had tried to submit the article to the Journal of Mental Science; after a 12-month delay, the Journal informed Bourne they had rejected the article, telling him to "get more experience". [20]
In 1957, when insulin coma treatment use was declining, The Lancet published the results of a randomized, controlled trial where patients were either given insulin coma treatment or identical treatment but with unconsciousness produced by barbiturates. There was no difference in outcome between the groups and the authors concluded that, whatever the benefits of the coma regimen, insulin was not the specific therapeutic agent. [21]
In 1958, American neuropsychiatrist Max Fink published in the Journal of the American Medical Association the results of a random controlled comparison in 60 patients treated with 50 iatrogenic insulin-induced comas or chlorpromazine in doses from 300 mg to 2000 mg/day. [22] The results were essentially the same in relief and discharge ratings but chlorpromazine was safer with fewer side-effects, easier to administer, and better suited to long-term care.[ citation needed ]
In 1958, Bourne published a paper on increasing disillusionment in the psychiatric literature about insulin coma therapy for schizophrenia. He suggested there were several reasons it had received almost universal uncritical acceptance by reviews and textbooks for several decades despite the occasional disquieting negative finding, including that, by the 1930s when it all started, schizophrenics were considered inherently unable to engage in psychotherapy, and insulin coma therapy "provided a personal approach to the schizophrenic, suitably disguised as a physical treatment so as to slip past the prejudices of the age." [23]
By the 1970s, insulin shock therapy had mostly fallen out of use in the United States, though was still practiced in some hospitals. [24] Its use may have continued longer in China, India, and the Soviet Union. [20] [25]
Recent articles about insulin coma treatment have attempted to explain why it was given such uncritical acceptance. In the US, Deborah Doroshow wrote that insulin coma therapy secured its foothold in psychiatry not because of scientific evidence or knowledge of any mechanism of therapeutic action, but due to the impressions it made on the minds of the medical practitioners within the local world in which it was administered and the dramatic recoveries observed in some patients. Today, she writes, those who were involved are often ashamed, recalling it as unscientific and inhumane. Administering insulin coma therapy made psychiatry seem a more legitimate medical field. Harold Bourne, who questioned the treatment at the time, said: "It meant that psychiatrists had something to do. It made them feel like real doctors instead of just institutional attendants". [5]
One retired psychiatrist who was interviewed by Doroshow "described being won over because his patients were so sick and alternative treatments did not exist". [5] Doroshow argues that "psychiatrists used complications to exert their practical and intellectual expertise in a hospital setting" and that collective risk-taking established "especially tight bonds among unit staff members". [5] She finds it ironic that psychiatrists "who were willing to take large therapeutic risks were extremely careful in their handling of adverse effects". Psychiatrists interviewed by Doroshow recalled how insulin coma patients were provided with various routines and recreational and group-therapeutic activities, to a much greater extent than most psychiatric patients. Insulin coma specialists often chose patients whose problems were the most recent and who had the best prognosis; in one case discussed by Doroshow a patient had already started to show improvement before insulin coma treatment, and after the treatment denied that it had helped, but the psychiatrists nevertheless argued that it had. [5]
In 1959, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, John Nash, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was initially treated at McLean Hospital. When he relapsed, he was admitted to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. His associates at Princeton University pleaded with the hospital director to have Nash admitted to the insulin coma unit, recognizing that it was better staffed than other hospital units. He responded to treatment and was subsequently medicated with neuroleptics. [26]
Nash's life story was presented in the film A Beautiful Mind , which accurately portrayed the seizures associated with his treatments. [27] In a review of the Nash history, Fink ascribed the success of coma treatments to the 10% of associated seizures, noting that physicians often augmented the comas by convulsions induced by ECT. He envisioned insulin coma treatment as a weak form of convulsive therapy. [28]
In the UK, psychiatrist Kingsley Jones sees the support of the Board of Control as important in persuading psychiatrists to use insulin coma therapy. The treatment then acquired the privileged status of a standard procedure, protected by professional organizational interests. He also notes that it has been suggested that the Mental Treatment Act 1930 encouraged psychiatrists to experiment with physical treatments. [2]
British lawyer Phil Fennell notes that patients "must have been terrified" by the insulin coma therapy procedures and the effects of the massive overdoses of insulin, and were often rendered more compliant and easier to manage after a course. [14]
Leonard Roy Frank, an American activist from the psychiatric survivors movement who underwent 50 forced insulin coma treatments combined with ECT, described the treatment as "the most devastating, painful and humiliating experience of my life", a "flat-out atrocity" glossed over by psychiatric euphemism, and a violation of basic human rights. [29]
In 2013, French physician-and-novelist Laurent Seksik wrote an historical novel about the tragic life of Eduard Einstein: Le cas Eduard Einstein. He related the encounter between Dr Sakel and Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein's first wife (and Eduard's mother), and the way Sakel's therapy had been given to Eduard, who had schizophrenia. [30]
Like many new medical treatments for diseases previously considered incurable, depictions of insulin coma therapy in the media were initially favorable. In the 1940 film Dr. Kildare's Strange Case , young Kildare uses the new "insulin shock cure for schizophrenia" to bring a man back from insanity. The film dramatically shows a five-hour treatment that ends with a patient eating jelly sandwiches and reconnecting with his wife. Other films of the era began to show a more sinister approach, beginning with the 1946 film Shock , in which actor Vincent Price plays a doctor who plots to murder a patient using an overdose of insulin in order to keep the fact that he was a murderer a secret. More recent films include Frances (1982) in which actress Frances Farmer undergoes insulin coma treatment, and A Beautiful Mind , which depicted genius John Nash undergoing insulin treatment. In an episode of the medical drama House M.D. , House puts himself in an insulin shock to try to make his hallucinations disappear. [31] Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar refers to insulin coma therapy in chapter 15. In Kelly Rimmer's book, The German Wife, the character Henry Davis undergoes insulin shock therapy to treat 'combat fatigue'.
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.
Ugo Cerletti was an Italian neurologist who discovered the method of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) used in psychiatry. Electroconvulsive therapy is a therapy in which electric current is used to provoke a seizure for a short duration. This therapy is used in an attempt to treat certain mental disorders, and may be useful when other possible treatments have not, or cannot, cure the person of their mental disorder.
Manfred Joshua Sakel was an Austrian-Jewish neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, credited with developing insulin shock therapy in 1927.
Ladislas Joseph Meduna was a Hungarian neuropathologist and neuropsychiatrist who initiated convulsive treatment, the repeated induction of grand mal seizures, as a treatment of psychosis. Observing the high concentration of glia in post-mortem brains of patients with epilepsy and a paucity in those with schizophrenia, he proposed that schizophrenia might be treated by inducing "epileptic" seizures. Thus, chemically induced seizures became the electroconvulsive therapy that is now in worldwide use.
Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is the branch of medicine which deals with the study of the biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.
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.
Lauretta Bender was an American child neuropsychiatrist known for developing the Bender-Gestalt Test, a psychological test designed to evaluate visual-motor maturation in children. First published by Bender in 1938, the test became widely used for assessing children's neurological function and screening for developmental disorders. She performed research in the areas of autism spectrum disorders in children, suicide and violence. She was one of the first researchers to suggest that mental disorders in children might have a neurological basis, rather than attributing them to the child's bad behavior or poor upbringing.
The Soteria model is a milieu-therapeutic approach developed to treat acute schizophrenia, usually implemented in Soteria houses.
Mental disorders are classified as a psychological condition marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, and emotions to seriously impair the normal psychological and often social functioning of the individual. Individuals diagnosed with certain mental disorders can be unable to function normally in society. Mental disorders may consist of several affective, behavioral, cognitive and perceptual components. The acknowledgement and understanding of mental health conditions has changed over time and across cultures. There are still variations in the definition, classification, and treatment of mental disorders.
Electroconvulsive therapy is a controversial psychiatric treatment in which seizures are induced with electricity. ECT was first used in the United Kingdom in 1939 and, although its use has been declining for several decades, it was still given to about 11,000 people a year in the early 2000s.
Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind was an American neurologist and psychiatrist. She conducted pioneering research into the use of insulin, lithium, and electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She was the daughter of Czech and Romanian immigrants. She received her medical degree in Chicago, Illinois, and her Masters in Los Angeles, California. After marrying Eugene Ziskind, they opened their own practice. Somerfeld-Ziskind was later chair of the psychiatry department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Ted Chabasinski is an American psychiatric survivor, human rights activist and attorney who lives in Berkeley, California. At the age of six, he was taken from his foster family's home and committed to a New York psychiatric facility. Diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia, he underwent intensive electroshock therapy and remained an inmate in a state psychiatric hospital until the age of seventeen. He subsequently trained as a lawyer and became active in the psychiatric survivors movement. In 1982, he was a leader in an initially successful campaign seeking to ban the use of electroshock in Berkeley, California.
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
In psychiatry, catastrophic schizophrenia or schizocaria is an outdated term for a rare acute form of schizophrenia leading to chronic psychosis and deterioration of the personality. Catastrophic schizophrenia was thought to be the most severe subtype of schizophrenia, as it had "an acute onset and rapid decline into a chronic state without remission". Catastrophic schizophrenia was also referred to as schizocaria, which was defined by Gerhard Mauz as a psychosis that caused the absolute destruction of the core of one's being.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:
David John Impastato was an American neuropsychiatrist who pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the United States. A treatment for mental illness initially called "electroshock," ECT was developed in 1937 by Dr. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, working in Rome. Impastato has been credited with the earliest documented use of the revolutionary method in North America, administered in early 1940 to a schizophrenic female patient in New York City. Soon after, he and colleague Dr. Renato Almansi completed the first case study of ECT to appear in a U.S. publication. Impastato spent the next four decades refining the technique, gaining recognition as one of its most authoritative spokesmen. He taught, lectured widely and published over fifty articles on his work. He called on ECT practitioners to observe the strictest protocols of patient safety, countered resistance to ECT from both the medical and cultural establishments, and met later challenges to electroconvulsive therapy from developments in psychopharmacology. Impastato would live to see ECT recommended by the American Psychiatric Association for a distinct core of intractable mental disorders. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took longer to respond to the treatment's potential. But in 2016 the FDA drafted guidelines for ECT similar to those of the APA, as well as proposing regulations for treatment with Class II and Class III devices. Though still not free of controversy, electroconvulsive therapy is the treatment of choice for an estimated 100,000 patients a year in the United States.
Psychiatry is, and has historically been, viewed as controversial by those under its care, as well as sociologists and psychiatrists themselves. There are a variety of reasons cited for this controversy, including the subjectivity of diagnosis, the use of diagnosis and treatment for social and political control including detaining citizens and treating them without consent, the side effects of treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy, antipsychotics and historical procedures like the lobotomy and other forms of psychosurgery or insulin shock therapy, and the history of racism within the profession in the United States.
Shock therapy describes a set of techniques used in psychiatry to treat depressive disorder or other mental illnesses. It covers multiple forms, such as inducing seizures or other extreme brain states, or acting as a painful method of aversive conditioning.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial therapy used to treat certain mental illnesses such as major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, depressed bipolar disorder, manic excitement, and catatonia. These disorders are difficult to live with and often very difficult to treat, leaving individuals suffering for long periods of time. In general, ECT is not looked at as a first line approach to treating a mental disorder, but rather a last resort treatment when medications such as antidepressants are not helpful in reducing the clinical manifestations.
Ronald Arthur Sandison was a British psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Among his other work. he is particularly noted for his pioneering studies and use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) as a psychotheraputic drug. As a consultant psychiatrist, his LSD work was mainly carried out during the 1950s and '60s at Powick Hospital, a large psychiatric facility near Malvern, Worcestershire, after which he spent several years in Southampton, where he was instrumental in the establishment of the university medical school. He returned to his native Shetland Isles in the 1970s and worked in psychotherapy there. He later specialised in psychosexual medicine on the UK mainland. Sandison died at the age of 94, and was buried in Ledbury near Malvern.