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First Psychiatric Medications and Treatments

Psychiatry has not always looked like the medical field that it is today. There was a time when psychiatric patients were merely contained and dealt with. As revolutionary scientists took steps to research and develop treatments for psychiatric disorders, they did actually make developments. Therapies came into being that could be duplicated with positive results. Psychotherapy and behavioral therapy are two common and effective types. In addition to speech related therapy, medications were also developed and implemented with startlingly good results. After hundreds of years in the dark, light started emerging onto the field of psychiatry. Instead of only demonstrating mysterious unknowns, psychiatric disorders could be effectively treated to bring relief and normal life to the patients.

Infectious Disorder Cures

The first instance of a doctor curing a psychiatric disorder happened in 1917. Neurosyphilis was a disorder that represented itself as physical symptoms as well as tendencies toward insanity. Many times the sufferers of this disease suffered increasingly from Dementia until they died at an early age. Julius von Wagner-Juaregg discovered that infecting the suffering patients with malaria would overwhelmingly bring about remission of neurosyphilis symptoms. By 1944, the better cure was found out to be a treatment of penicillin. This particular disorder was caused by infection, but nonetheless, the discovery of a cure brought hope to the psychiatric field.

The Need for Hope

The problem with medicating psychiatric patients in the past was that the medications were rarely related to the mental illnesses. As drugs were discovered for various purposes, they often seemed to find their way into the asylums. Morphine was used to calm patients until it was discovered that it was addictive. Laxatives were used to cure insanity out of a belief that the illness could be, in a sense, ‘cleaned out' of the system. Other sedatives were also routinely used, but many were addictive and only masked psychiatric disorders.

Medication and Sleep

As discoveries progressed, more medications were discovered that were effective at relieving psychiatric disorder symptoms. At the same time, the newly found drugs were less likely to be addictive and were also much less toxic to the human body. Yet, the field was still developing. Barbiturates quickly became the dominant and preferred medication for most psychiatric disorders. The drugs would cause prolonged sleep, occasionally for days at a time. Patients often did respond to the treatments, and some of these early found drugs are still used today for some disorders.

Alternative Treatments

In the 1930's, the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was introduced. The method of treatment for depression and some other disorders may seem to some to be a little less than modern, but it did and has continued to be used successfully. The treatments were represented in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest somewhat incorrectly. Patients are anesthetized before treatments of the kind, and they often receive relief from depressive symptoms.

Psychiatry has come a long way since the beginnings. As the doctors and scientists continue to learn more they can discontinue ineffective or dangerous treatments in favor of those which improve conditions and improve the lives of psychiatric patients. Research continues today for better and more effective medications, counseling techniques and treatment options.

Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.