Lobotomy. Do you know anyone who ever had one?
@Jackalyn (7559)
Oxford, England
March 6, 2018 11:40am CST
I've described before how I worked in the infamous High Royds hospital in Yorkshire for a while during the 70s. The place is all over YouTube because when they shut it down it became a favourite place for people to explore and even the scene of a horror movie. Now it's gone and luxury flats fill the building. YouTube also contain many people giving accounts of their experiences of being a patient there and there is even footage of the ward that I worked on and I actually recognise quite a few of the people in it.
At the time I had plans to become a psychiatrist. I thought working in such a place would give me a good insight into mental health. This hospital became world-renowned because they pioneered the lobotomy. This is where they literally cut out a piece of the patients brain. The idea is to cut out what causes them to be aggressive.
J would come and work on the ward I was on. This was a geriatric Ward. However, I used to get seconded onto a secure female Ward that was so bad you are actually allowed to ring in and say you couldn't cope with working there. I would guess that most of the people put forward for a lobotomy came from that or the male ward that partnered it.
Jay was a patient. Patients who were deemed well enough were able to work on other wards. One day we learnt that she was scheduled to have lobotomy. I think opinion varies a lot as to how safe or good these were.
I do know she had problems with aggression. What I don't remember is if there was actually any difference afterwards. I have a feeling she's simply disappeared from our ward.
The other day I was watching a documentary about High Royds on YouTube and it contains the story of one lady who had a lobotomy and the procedure was televised. The footage was really worrying. This lady said that she will never forgive them for giving her this procedure. I don't think at the time patients had an awful lot of say in their treatment.
Iater, I worked in a children's epileptic unit in Oxford. There too, operations were done on the brain, but I think that actually helped some of the children. In that case they were dealing with the part of the brain that caused the epilepsy. I believe those operations are still done.
Do you know anyone who has had a lobotomy? Would you agree to it being done to you? I don't think they perform the procedure anymore. I suppose that our understanding of mental health is better now than it was back then. However, it still shocks me to think that I worked anywhere that was performing such a barbaric procedure.
6 people like this
6 responses
@JohnRoberts (109857)
• Los Angeles, California
6 Mar 18
I don't think they are performed anymore since the 60s because it is such a barbaric procedure. I visited a former mental home now a museum which delved into this and a lobotomy can do some good on a young child because their brain has time to grow and recover but it's terrible on adults.
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@Jackalyn (7559)
• Oxford, England
6 Mar 18
No, they were still doing them in the 70s because I worked at High Royds there in the 70s, not the 60s. I think this would have been 1974. There was a horrible culture where whatever the doctors said went and the patients did not have much saying their treatment at all. One got the impression that if you offended a psychiatrist or a doctor you would be punished or given some horrible treatment. I saw some truly barbaric things happen at that hospital. On this shift opposite to mine, I witnessed two nurses or care assistants literally drag an old woman along by her bottom calling her "A silly old cow." then, the subject of another post may well be about the woman upstairs who ran toward like it was her own personal country. She was to charge nurse/......
It may well be that different states stopped doing the procedure earlier then they did in the UK?
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@Jackalyn (7559)
• Oxford, England
6 Mar 18
That, of course, is the other side of the coin. I didn't get attacked by a patient while I was at High Royds. However, as a mental health advocate in more recent times, I actually had somebody come up and slap me round the face for sitting there looking beautiful! I wasn't talking to them and had nothing to do with them. I was advocating for a completely different patient at the time. It is a risk you run when you enter into the mental health field on certain wards. I chose to advocates on a locked Ward.
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@Jackalyn (7559)
• Oxford, England
8 Mar 18
@Courage7 that is really dreadful. Accidents should not happen on a ward and I think a lot of it comes down to lack of staffing. The week before my wedding I was actually bitten by a child on my cheek. We were supposed to have two people with her but the charge nurse insisted I could look after her alone and wouldn't listen to my concerns. Thankfully the Mark had gone by my wedding day but that was because I knew exactly what to do if someone bit me and a nurse came in thankfully behind me and got the child off.
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@AmbiePam (85298)
• United States
7 Mar 18
They were terrible surgeries. I remember reading about JFK and Ted Kennedy's sister getting one. She was always mentally slower than the others, but she functioned okay in getting herself dressed, and conversing, but she was impulsive. They took her for a lobotomy, and she was never the same. So much so they had to put her into an institution. It's amazing to me so many were performed when they did so much damage. I can't imagine willingly having one. Then again, I can't imagine consenting to electro shock therapy for depression, and they did that too. In some places they still do.
@celticeagle (158693)
• Boise, Idaho
6 Mar 18
I don't know anyone who had one. Was told by my doctor that one may be the only think to help my depression since meds don't seem to help much.
@PatZAnthony (14752)
• Charlotte, North Carolina
6 Mar 18
Although no one I know has had a lobotomy that I am aware of, that sounds like a terribly barbaric thing to do to anyone especially in light of the fact that this surgery may not work for the patient.
However look at all the surgeries that are done today in an effort to help the humans who just wind up suffering then for the rest of their lives because they had the surgery.
@JudyEv (325345)
• Rockingham, Australia
6 Mar 18
This sounds pretty awful. Humans do some terrible things to their own kind don't they? I'm not necessarily talking about lobotomies, etc - just in general. It's hard to believe the justification for their actions.
