ISSN: 2044-9038 (Print) 2044-9046 (Electronic)

Clinical Practice

Psychosurgery Research Articles

Psychosurgery – sometimes called functional neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders or psychiatric neurosurgery – is that the treatment of psychiatric disorders by means of cerebral neurosurgery. From the time of the primary operation within the 1930s until today, psychosurgery has been a controversial treatment. The use of psychiatric surgery has been overshadowed by doubts about its usefulness, inadequate reporting of outcomes, and ethical questions. After its introduction by Egas Moniz in 1936, psychosurgery became popular within the 1940s and within the early 1950s. Then, the arrival of effective psychotropic agents and therefore the rise of sociopolitical views of the causation of mental disorders led to the rapid decline of the surgery. Today, psychosurgery is not a common practice. Psychiatric surgery is carried out in a few medical centers. With time, its indications have also changed. In the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of schizophrenic patients received surgery. It is now generally accepted that schizophrenia can't be helped by psychosurgery. Today, deep brain stimulation represents a virtual renaissance within the surgical approach to psychiatric disorders. Its current main indications are for treatment-resistant mental disorders, particularly major depression, and obsessive–compulsive disorder. Psychosurgery now features a very small part to play in psychiatric treatment. It has never been subjected to a satisfactory controlled trial, partly because of ethical problems and also because its use had already diminished substantially by the time that adequate trial methodologies were developed.  

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