Lobotomy, asylums, madness and lunacy. A History of Mental Illness with Andrew Scull

Welcome to episode 219 with Andrew Scull, who is a sociologist whose research has centred on the social history of medicine and particularly psychiatry for more than 50 years.

He is a recipient of the Roy Porter Medal for lifetime contributions to the history of medicine and the author of more than a dozen books including Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity and Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness.

In this episode Andrew guides me through the history of mental illness and psychiatry.

We discuss the earliest documented accounts of madness and lunacy, some of the different ways civilisation has approached the treatment of mental illness throughout history and the role of the religion and the church.

We chat about the idea behind asylums, why they didn’t work and what came next.

We cover surgery as treatment before the introduction of a medical approach and how some of our medications were created and began to be prescribed

And we chat about the origins of lobotomy, electric shock treatment, the influence of Hitler and the Nazi’s during WW2 on early theories around genetic predisposition and what we can learn about the future of treating mental illness from studying the past.

This is a huge episode and we cover an incredible amount of history in a relatively short amount of time.  I can’t thank Andrew enough for his insight and I found some of the things we covered absolutely mind blowing!

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Thanks for listening!