Lobotomy, what and why:
“CONSULT A MEDICAL DOCTOR”
A lobotomy is a type of brain surgery that was once used to treat certain mental illnesses, mainly severe depression, schizophrenia, and extreme anxiety.
The basic idea was to sever connections between the prefrontal cortex (the front part of the brain involved in thinking, planning, and emotions) and the rest of the brain. Surgeons believed this would reduce a patient’s intense emotional suffering and uncontrollable behaviors. The procedure was first widely promoted in the 1930s and 1940s, especially by a Portuguese neurologist named Egas Moniz, who even won a Nobel Prize for it in 1949.
Why it was done:
At the time, there were very few effective treatments for severe mental illness.
Hospitals were overcrowded with patients who had no hope of recovery.
Psychiatrists were desperate for anything that could calm violent or suicidal individuals.
However, lobotomies often left patients with terrible side effects:
Loss of personality
Emotional flatness
Intellectual decline
Sometimes even death
By the 1950s and 1960s, new psychiatric medications like Thorazine became available, and lobotomies quickly fell out of favor because the risks were too high compared to the benefits.
Shervan K Shahhian
LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 