Invitation to Psychology

424 Chapter 12 Approaches to Treatment and Therapy

But we hope you will resist the impulse to jump on

any new-drug bandwagon. Critical thinkers must

weigh the benefits and limitations of medication

for psychological problems, tolerate uncertainty

while waiting for the data on safety and effective-

ness, and resist the temptation to oversimplify.

Direct Brain intervention LO 12.3

For most of human history, a person suffering

from mental illness often got an extreme form

of help. A well-meaning tribal healer or doc-

tor would try to release the “psychic pressures”

believed to be causing the symptoms by drilling

holes in the victim’s skull. It didn’t work!

The most famous modern effort to cure

mental illness through psychosurgery—intervening

directly in the brain—was invented in 1935, when

a Portuguese neurologist, António Egas Moniz,

drilled two holes into the skull of a mental patient

and used an instrument to crush nerve fibers run-

ning from the prefrontal lobes to other areas.

(Later, some doctors just used an ice pick.) This

operation, called a prefrontal lobotomy, was supposed

to reduce the patient’s emotional symptoms with-

out impairing intellectual ability. Incredibly, the

procedure was never assessed or validated scien-

tifically, yet it was performed on more than 40,000

people in the United States. Tragically, lobotomies

left many patients apathetic, withdrawn, and un-

able to care for themselves (Valenstein, 1986). Yet

Moniz won a Nobel Prize for his work.

In contrast to using surgical intervention,

some psychiatrists attempt to alter brain function

on which it was originally tested. As already noted,

antipsychotics such as Risperdal are being used for

nonpsychotic disorders. Likewise, antidepressants

are being marketed for social phobias; Prozac,

when its patent expired, was renamed Sarafem and

marketed to women for “premenstrual dysphoric

disorder”; Ritalin, originally intended only for

school-aged children, was soon being prescribed

for 2- and 3-year-olds.

In coming years, you will be hearing about

“promising medications” for such common psycho-

logical problems as memory loss, eating disorders,

smoking, and alcoholism. Every large pharmaceuti-

cal company is working on one or more of these.

A man receives ECT (left); a researcher demonstrates TMS (right).

© The New Yorker Collection 2001 Barbara Smaller from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

“I think the dosage needs adjusting. I’m not

nearly as happy as the people in the ads.”