Page 524 - Understanding Psychology

1. Review the Vocabulary Describe how antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, and antianxiety drugs work as therapy.
2. Visualize the Main Idea In a graphic organizer similar to the one below, list and explain the biological approaches to treatment.
Biological Approaches to Treatment
3. Recall Information Why is psy- chosurgery controversial? Why is it used?
4. Think Critically Describe a situation in which you believe a therapist would suggest biological therapy involving psychosurgery for a patient.
5. Application Activity
Imagine that you have been asked to give a talk about the biological
approaches to psychological problems. Create an outline for your speech.
psychosurgery:a medical operation that destroys part of the brain to make the patient calmer and freer of symptoms
prefrontal lobotomy:
a radical form of psychosurgery in which a section of the frontal lobe of the brain is destroyed
patient is given a sedative and injected with a muscle relaxant to alleviate involuntary muscular contractions. Even with these improvements, how- ever, electroconvulsive therapy is a drastic treatment and must be used with great caution. Many people experience some memory problems after receiving this treatment. When ECT is applied bilaterally—with the elec- tric current running across both of the brain’s hemispheres—the patient may lose memory for events occurring one to two days before the treat- ment. Today physicians usually apply ECT unilaterally to the right hemi- sphere only. This technique results in little memory loss. The use of ECT has declined somewhat, but it remains a highly effective treatment for depression (Thienhaus et al., 1990).
Psychosurgery
Brain surgery performed to treat psychological disorders is called psychosurgery. The most common operation, prefrontal lobotomy, involves destruction of the front portion of the brain, just behind the fore- head. This part of the brain, the frontal lobe, contains most of the nerve connections that control emotions. From the late 1930s to the early 1950s, doctors performed prefrontal lobotomies on people who were extremely violent or diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The use of prefrontal lobot- omies decreased significantly in the mid-1950s, when newly developed drugs offered alternative treatments. At the same time, mounting evi- dence indicated that lobotomized patients showed an inability to plan. Furthermore, destroyed brain tissue never regenerates, so the effects are permanent. Patients may become apathetic and less creative after surgery. Although specific nerve tracts and areas of the brain can now be located very precisely, less than 200 prefrontal lobotomies are performed annually in the United States (Sabbatini, 1997).
Assessment
510 Chapter 17 / Therapy and Change