Insulin-coma therapy

I shall argue that there is no real demarcation between previous eras psychiatric treatments and the theories that justified them and our own that the need to believe in a cure for psychiatric conditions that drove and sustained people s faith in insulin coma therapy, ECT, radical surgery, sex hormone therapy and many other bizarre interventions is the strongest impetus behind the use of modern-day psychiatric drugs. I shall suggest that the belief that modern drug treatments represent... 

Evidence from journals, textbooks and patient case notes confirms that the use of insulin coma therapy was generally restricted to people diagnosed with schizophrenia (Moncrieff 1999). The socially inclined Henderson and Gillespie were sceptical about whether its effects were specific or not ... 

Whether insulin coma therapy merely worked through a placebo effect, that is, its dramatic nature convinced people, including the patient that he or she had improved, or whether it had real pacifying effects as a consequence of causing brain damage is uncertain. Both explanations seem plausible. Either way it is now generally believed that it was not an effective or specific treatment for schizophrenia. 

The importance of ECT, insulin coma therapy and the other physical treatments for understanding the current state of psychiatry is that they helped to encourage a confidence that mental illness could be cured with physical means. By the mid-20th century psychiatrists finally really believed they could resolve the problems experienced by people under their care by acting on what they presumed was the bodily basis of the problem. This was the context into which a new generation of psychotropic drugs arrived in the 1950s. 

I am indebted especially to Robert Whitaker (2002) and Leonard Roy Franks (1978) for material on the history of insulin coma therapy and ECT. 

Fink, M. Karliner, W. Primary sources insulin coma therapy. PBS American Experience, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/filmmore/ps ict.html, accessed 13.03.2007. 

Mayer-Gross W. Insulin coma therapy of schizophrenia Some critical remarks on Dr. SakeTs report. J Ment Sci 1951. 97 132-135... 

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