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“We will be judged by how we treated the most vulnerable in our society.”

Controversial Treatments
Based on listener feedback, today, I review the dark history of treatments for mental illness. In my review, I highlight the most astonishing practices – Who knows how well intentioned these actors were. Nevertheless, treatments such as blood letting, insulin shock therapy, and lobotomy were anything but humane. Finally, I draw attention to the current practice of Conversion Therapy, a modern treatment for homosexuality, based in prejudice and bigotry.
Episode Outline
Welcome to Episode 55: Controversial Treatments for Mental Illness
- What We Do:
- Behavioural Medicine and Health Psychology
- Providing easily accessible content designed to help you design your own transformative experience.
- Today:
- A look at historical and current forms of treatment for the mentally ill that also produce uncertain, if not dangerous, outcomes.
- Services Review:
- Finding My Psych offers three core services focused on promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
- Foundations: Wellness Planning Workshop
- Walking For Vitality: Powering Up
- Running For Fitness: 5k Build-Up
- Finding My Psych offers three core services focused on promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
Treatments – Dubious At Best
- Frontal Lobotomy (Leucotomies):
- Received the Nobel Prize – Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz in 1949
- Insertion of Leucotomes through the orbits of the eyes, twisted and then removed.
- Permanent form of sedation.
- Treatment of the “Humors”:
- Originated from Ancient Greece – Popularized in the 1600s.
- Illness originates from out of balance substances in the body.
- Included bleeding and vomiting were the most common.
- “Moral” Treatments:
- Physical treatments designed to end mental illness.
- Popular in the 18th century.
- Ice baths, restraints, isolation.
- Metrazol Shock Therapy:
- Circulatory and respiratory stimulant.
- Treatment for psychosis.
- GABA Antagonist – Stimulant medication inducing convulsions and coma.
- High incidence of death – Discontinued by FDA in 1982s.
- Insulin Shock Therapy:
- Used widely in the 40s and 50s.
- Regular treatments over several weeks slowly increased until coma induced.
- 100-150 units – Some cases 450 units depending on individual.
- Some people reported, “clarity” after coma.
- “Fixing The Homosexual”:
- Removed as a mental illness in the 1970s.
- Up to its removal, several approaches were used: ECT, Castration, Vasectomy, pubic nerve surgery and lobotomy.
- Worst? – Transplanting testes from heterosexual men to homosexual men.
- Today – Conversion Therapy – A form of brain washing using religious beliefs, shaping, shame, and isolation.
Not Considered Controversial Treatments
- ECT – Electroconvulsive Therapy (Since 1940s):
- Done under general anesthesia
- Small electric current inducing brief seizure.
- Tx of severe depression, severe mania, and catatonia.