Psychosurgery

Lobotomy

Freeman goes into the frontal lobe as the person may have an irrational personality/bad behaviour

Trans-orbital lobotomy is Freeman’s method of going through the eye socket

Under anaesthesia, so the patients are sedated

Uses electric shocks

They insert and instrument into the frontal lobe to access the brain

Bilateral Cingulotomy

Into the cingular gyrus

MRI scans identifies exact part of the brain

Electrode burns the part of the brain or gamma knife use for radiation

For depression and severe anger issues

Side effects: Can’t express your feelings

Capsulotomy

Into the capsuge

Invasion into the skull and burns the tissues

Deep brain stimulation

DBS

Implant on the chest, under the skin

Sends electrical impulses to the brain

Permanently implanted- Wire to a pacemaker

Connected to a battery pack- produces a high frequency current to interpret neural activity

Treatment for OCD

Leucotomy- Effectiveness

Pippard-1955

62% success rate for depression

50% mood disorder

almost no side effects (95% of clients)

but it’s a last resort- 62% is good

other forms are more effective- modern surgery

side effects are permanent though if people experience them

DBS-effectiveness

67%- still a good outcome

Past techniques were based on guess work

Permanent side effects- brain damaged in large quantities

Mayberg et al- 2005

4/6 patients with severe depression

‘Striking remission’

Ethical implications

Risk of harm, distress and embarrassment asking for a surgery and the side effects after

Lack of informed consent/use of deception- forced to get the surgery to help them even if they don’t want it and it has life threatening and horrible side effects

Since the mental health act 1983-consent must be gained