Please don’t worry. This is not going to be some kind of dumb rant against pills or the pharmaceutical industry. I just want to show you how what was considered normal in psychiatric health care 50 years ago, is seen a very different light by us today.
And by implication, how what we now think is normal, may be considered weird 50 years from now.
50 years ago, a popular tranquilizer was the drug Nembutal. It is based on pentobarbital, which as a barbiturate is rather dangerous. It’s not only addictive, easily creating drug-dependency. An actual overdose will simply be lethal. It has long remained in use as a strong tranquilizer, for example to reduce anxiety. But in modern psychiatry it has largely been replaced by other, hopefully less dangerous drugs. It is now mainly being used by veterinarians: for euthanizing animals.
In the USA, it has recently also been used as a simple way to carry out executions, replacing more complex mixtures of lethal drugs. In March 2011, Ohio prison inmate Johnnie Baston was the first to be executed by a single-drug dose of pentobarbital (see this Washington Post article). In July 2011, when already 18 people had been executed in this way, the Danish pentobarbital producer Lundbeck announced that it would no longer accept the use of its drug for execution purposes (see this Guardian article).
Flashback to 50 years ago. Here is an old advertisement that shows how back then, this same drug was promoted (and used) for psychiatric treatment of children:
For us today, this advertisement looks just weird. Not just because it presents the use of Nembutal to tranquilize children as something normal. It also looks weird by itself.
It shows a friendly slogan “when gentleness is important”. But this strangely conflicts with the crude, caricatural, in modern eyes almost disrespectful and disturbing way the child is depicted in the image. The kid looks like a little Frankenstein, a little monster. One look at him and we’re supposed to understand immediately why, yes of course, this boy does need a gentle Nembutal treatment, real quick, before he… (fill in your darkest Dracula fantasies here).
I’ll happily leave all other interpretations of this weird advertisement to you.
Now, instead of flashing back 50 years, flash forward, to 50 years from now. To 2062. How will people then look back to today’s practices of easily diagnosing unruly, not-concentrated children as “ADHD” and sedating them with medication, instead of taking adequate educational steps?
Frankly – Frankensteinly – I think those people in the future will find this way of treating children just as unbelievable and weird, as we find this old Nembutal advertisement.
We can repeat this same time-travel thought experiment for many other primitive practices within psychiatry, such as the still far too easy and liberal use of electroshocks. What will people in 2062 think of the fact that I, a depression patient, got electroshocks even after I got a heart failure during one of those treatments?
There are many more examples of still-existing psychiatric primitiveness: again, I’ll leave this little bit of thinking to you.
The point is: if we can clearly guess how 50 years from now people will find us weird, then why should we wait those 50 more years before making some simple, obvious improvements in psychiatry? Let’s be a little more critical about what we’re doing today! Let’s work a little harder! Let that future begin now!
• note: OK. I admit, maybe this whole demonstration here was a little on the demagogic side. But in essence, I don’t think it’s untrue.
Maybe I’m just too impatient? And now I come to think of that, would this impatience be one more cause of depression?
They sneaked out of the back door and ran through the fields, past the honey tree where Mother had gone the day when she disappeared, and bravely they entered the Forest.
Anton was just going to tell Bella he was getting afraid, when something strange happened. Suddenly the Blue Shoe in Bella’s hand began to sing. It was Mother’s voice. It was like Mother was hidden deep down inside her own shoe, and now she had started singing to them. The children stood frozen, perplexed. They had not heard Mother singing since a long time, never heard her voice since she had disappeared:
After they had rounded a very big tree, a gray shape loomed before them. When they got closer, they saw what it was. It was the Petrified Man. They had never expected to see him with their own eyes, but there he was, like a statue.
Once upon a time, long ago, far from here, in the lush green meadows between Spattering Brook and the Grimm Forest, there was a small wooden farmhouse with a bright red roof. An old father lived there with his two little children, Anton and Bella. Yes, father had a gray beard since the beginning of times, but Anton and Bella were young. They had a fierce black cat who called himself Tss, and a sleepy dog, Rowlins, who rowled the porch.
But wait! I hear you asking. What about mother? Yes, there was one very sad little thing in the house. Mother’s left shoe. A small, gleaming, pointed, bright Blue Shoe. It stood on top of the cupboard, and every morning they looked at it and had to cry a little. Just a few tears, you know. Because that Blue Shoe was all that was left of mother.
But that afternoon, father had heard a shrill, terrible scream from the Forest. This scream took so long that the flames in the cooking stove shivered and froze, motionless, and a blackbird dropped from the air right in front of the door opening. This scream did never end and had father frozen, too. He could not move until, finally, the scream stopped and suddenly the entire world became silent. Dead silent. Eerily silent.
The basket still hung in the tree. No one was there. The bees had stopped buzzing: they slowly drifted in mid-air without a sound, floating around like brownish flakes of snow. But Rowlins with his sniffer-nose picked up a scent and they followed the trail into the bushes, into the green twilight under the trees of the Grimm Forest.
All this had happened a thousand summers ago, but Anton and Bella still thought about their mother every day. They missed her so much, her dancing and laughing, her gentle caresses, her softly-sung lullabies, her good-night-kiss. And they missed her honey-spoon, too.
The Witch nodded slowly, like she understood. Bella said: “We want mother back.” Anton said, “Yes, we want mother back. Don’t you know a way to get mother back, Witch?” The Witch nodded again, and frowned.
“Come on children,” father said quickly, “Let’s eat now. This rabbit here doesn’t like to get cold!” And eat they did. The Witch kept very silent, and not just because she was eating. Anton and Bella said little, too.
“If you get lost,” said the Witch, “ask the squirrels to bring you to the Dwarf’s place. He’s the only one down there you can trust. He may be able to help you. All this will very dangerous, but don’t be afraid. When you’ve found Melancholix the Dragon and have been brave enough to look into his eyes,” she reached into her robe again, “then show him this little mirror. And don’t forget to take the Blue Shoe with you!”
June 18, 1924 –
