The Lobotomist – PBS on mental health history

Last night, I watched an American Experience documentary on PBS called The Lobotomist. It’s a powerful, visceral piece, and there were times it was hard to watch.

In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine.

One of the experts suggests that the debate about lobotomy was, at its core, a debate about what makes us human. Is it the absence of illness and pain imposed by someone else… or is it the freedom to choose and the full range of human experience, painful as it may be?

Thresholds wholeheartedly supports the latter option: recovery for persons with mental illness is about empowering and encouraging, not imposing treatments against someone’s will.

Today in Illinois, the treatment we’re fighting against  isn’t as much lobotomies (though they’re still being performed), but nursing homes. Hundreds of people with mental illness are warehoused in these institutions where they’re given high doses of medication… not empowering supports and encouragement that could give them a shot a brighter future. It’s the same story, just different characters.

You can watch the documentary here.

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