The History of Mental Health Care Practices

Mental health treatment has made giant leaps since the 1600s. Because of advances in medical science, doctors have stopped relying on the supernatural for help and started studying the brain and its mysteries.

1600s

• In the 1600s, Native American medicine men called upon supernatural powers to fight mental illness. Rituals of purification and atonement were common.

1812

• In 1812, Benjamin Rush published the first American textbook of psychiatry. Humane treatment of the ill was called for in this groundbreaking text.

1909

• In 1909, Sigmund Freud visited America to hold a lecture on psychoanalysis. The lecture was held at Clark University in Massachusetts.

1936

• In 1936, the first human frontal lobotomy was performed. During the next 20 years, 20,000 of these operations were performed.

1952

• In 1952, chlorpromazine, the first conventional antipsychotic drug, was introduced. This medication is used to treat schizophrenia, as well as other major mental illnesses.

1990

• In 1990, brain imaging was found to be useful to chart the development of mental illnesses.