The care of individuals with mental health issues has been revolutionised over the last century, thanks to advances in treatment and greater understanding and awareness of psychiatric disorders and illnesses.
Even those with only minor mental health issues would often have been confined to an asylum or other institution where treatment might have consisted of little more than being locked up in a padded cell. Other treatments were much more intrusive and, to today’s more civilised minds, would now be considered barbaric.
These included psychosurgery or lobotomies, operations in which certain sections of the brain thought to be responsible for the mental illness would be removed. Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) was also common – this involved applying an electric current to the brain, again attempting to treat the “sick” part of the mind. Treatment using antipsychotic drugs was first used in the 1960s as ECT and lobotomies began to be phased out.
But the first radical changes in treatment began in the 1950s when the focus moved away from purely medical interventions to more therapeutic solutions, encouraging greater social support for patients and more treatment in the community and not simply in institutions.
Good mental health has come to be seen as something that also requires good physical health – for example, improvements in nutrition and diet have been shown to bring improvements in individuals’ mental health.
Disorders such as stress, anxiety and depression, which might once have caused an individual to be placed in a hospital, are now seen as disorders that can be treated and managed through several different therapies. Physical activity, for example, is known to boost the part of the brain that can protect us against anxiety and depression, lifting our mood. And so many therapies encourage patients to do more, such as walking or running, to improve their mood.
Such gentle therapies are far removed from the psychosurgery and ECT common just a few decades ago.
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