The Insane Lobotomy Craze Of The 1950s

I used to see a psychiatrist, an old guy, and as I was sitting in his office one day, I started reading all the certificates he had hanging on the walls. One in particular really caught my eye. “Psychiatric Surgery”. I started to question that. He didn’t want to discuss it. The next time I came to see him, that particular certificate was gone. I thought that was interesting…

I used to work in a nursing home, and one of the residents on my unit had a lobotomy when he was a 19yo college freshman; he was depressed because his mother had died. His procedure must have been done by an absolute butcher; he was unable to speak and he had to hold his eyelid open in order to see. Essentially he was robbed of everything his life could have been.

I think of April Burrell every single time the history of psychiatry is discussed. She was catatonic, diagnosed with psychosis, and admitted to a psychiatric facility for 20 yrs when a psychiatrist finally did bloodwork. They found that she has lupus. Lupus was treated and she woke from the catatonic state. This was in 2000. Not ancient history. Breaks my heart to think about how many Aprils there have been, how many there are right now.

I was recently in jail after a mental health crisis, instead of taking me to the hospital, they threw me in an 8×10 or so windowless concrete cell with a thin rubber layer over the walls and floor with just a blanket to lay on. Bright lights were on all day every day and the guards outside constantly played loud music or watched loud movies. I only slept for short naps when my body basically gave out. I lost all sense of time and after a few days of no sleep tried to bash my head into the wall. Their response to that was to handcuff my arms and legs to a chair and put me back in that room for another day or so. I was in there a total of 6 days before they sent me to a psychiatric hospital. I was told by the hospital that that was standard practice and actual part of how guards are trained to handle anyone who says they're suicidal in jail. They wouldn't even let me use the phone until I got to the hospital. When you're mentally ill in this society you lose all your rights, and it's just accepted as normal.

I had brain tumor surgery when I was 48, seven years ago. I had an incision from ear to ear, then my skin was pulled down so they could cut out all my forehead (in an oval shape). It was a 10 hour surgery and I had to relearn how to walk and had (still have) balance issues. It's been a tough recovery and I still need my walking stick and can't walk much at all. Grateful to have lived through it and that none of these "therapies" happened to me..😱

When I was a child in the late 60s and early 70s, my mother would speak in hushed, horrified tones about what happened at the nearest state mental hospitals. Transorbital lobotomies and shock treatments were some of those things and she told me to never tell anyone I was depressed or that might happen to me.

In my early years (1980s) I worked on a “deinstitutionalisation team” where we moved patients out of psychiatric hospitals into community living. I particularly remember one 65 year old woman. She was institutionalised in the 1930s as “uncontrollable” and “morally degenerate” because at 15 she snuck out of her house to go to a party. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her (and many of the “patients” we encountered). She was deeply institutionalised. For example she had no idea how to butter bread or boil a kettle. We taught her basic life skills and she went on to live independently in her own home for the remainder of her life. She made so many new friends on the “outside” that when she died at a ripe old 95 her funeral was a “standing room only” affair. She died a virgin.

I don't think Rosemary Kennedy was really mentally ill, until after the lobotomy. She just wasn't acting like her father wanted her to. Or at least that's what I always thought, but I could be wrong for sure.

7:14 I would argue that "best of intentions" is code for "need to be controlled," and that we're still doing it.

The reason Howard Dully didn’t get sever injuries was because he got the lobotomy when he was 12. His brain and mainly his frontal cortex was far from being full developed. His brain was probably able to heal some of that damage much better than an adult could.

So the vegetative state of the patient was considered a success so they kept going???? HOLY........

This video made me think about just how screwed I would be if I were born only half a decade earlier, as an extremely emotional autistic person who also struggles with various other mental illnesses

I have Bipolar disorder 1. I live a good life. I run a regional train station alone, am in a long term relationship and have five beautiful children. I am lucky to live such a good life that I wouldn’t have been afforded decades ago. It horrifies me to consider what my life could have been in the past.

Kudos for not lining up a Better Help sponsorship for this one! Edit: Just to clarify, it's not something I'd expect from Joe, but I feel like I see it often enough from other creators to mention my anxiety when he was winding up the Nebula read!

I worked in an old Craftsman house or Victorian 20 some years ago. There was a hidden room in the attic space for what the owners were told held a "mongoloid" child. Humans are the worst. Thanks

As the old meme goes ... Being an old-timey doctor would rule, just drunk as hell like “yeah u got ghosts in your blood, you should do cocaine about it”

“Why I have half a mind….” My wife’s grandmother had a lobotomy for an undefined mental issue, reportedly involving paranoid hallucinations. She was more or less functional, but very passive and almost non-existent conversationally

The title was a lot less disturbing when I thought it said ice PACK

My great uncle was lobotomized. He had anger issues and was a big farm boy in Maine, which his parents couldn’t control. After his ‘procedure’ he spent the rest of his life in a hospital, where he would go on unsupervised walks every day, until winter when he stepped on some thin ice, and couldn’t make his way back through the ice. They found scratch marks underneath the ice. My mom always thought he was just messed up. She would draw a picture for him and he would just look at her, then look away slowly. Brutal.

I learned about this because Axl Rose mentioned in an interview in the 1980s that he was “manic depressive” (now Bipolar 1) and lived in fear of doctors “jamming an ice pick into his eye.” So I looked that up. 😨😱😬 Nasty business. Very glad they stopped doing that. Especially now that I know I also have Bipolar disorder.