You may have noticed the irony that can be attached to the phrase, ‘what do we have to lose?’ So often things can go horribly wrong just after someone asks that fateful, seemingly rhetorical question. That’s sort of what happened once people decided to stop just confining people with mental illness, and started trying to ‘cure’ them. Join us this week as we explore medical treatments for mental illness from shock therapy to lobotomy; and meet those whose voices sounded alarm from Kesey to Kennedy.
SOURCES:
A History of the Ice Pick Lobotomy – Motherboard
Prefrontal Lobotomy The Surgical Relief of Mental Pain Walter Freeman and James W. Watts
The exiled Kennedy – The Independent
How ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ changed psychiatry – Telegraph
Shock and Disbelief – The Atlantic
Jailing People with Mental Illness – NAMI
JFK – Special Message to the Congress on Mental Illness and Mental Retardation.
We Need Better Funding for Mental Health Services NYT
Kennedy’s vision for mental health never realized – USA Today
History of the Rorschach’s test-
‘Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter,’ by Kate Clifford Larson – NYT
The exiled Kennedy – The Independent
The Forgotten Kennedy – The Guardian
The sad and dreadful life of Rosemary Kennedy – Irish Central
