Shock therapies came before 1940's. I would say that they were probably going down as you approach the 1950's, which is when chlorpromazine came out and started replacing a lot of the shock therapies intended for people diagnosed with schizophrenia. After which came various other drugs like Meprobamate, Miltown, Valium.
Just as a context, pre-1920's is US coming off its "Progressive Era" when people were all about "mental hygiene" and there was a paradigm shift in how mental health (which is a word more or less introduced in that era). Also the same time around which things like "maladjustment" and "feeble-mindedness" and the idea of the 'juvenile delinquent' came to be. What might help is the Buck vs. Bell trial on sterilizing mentally ill people for insight into public perception as well as treatment of the mentally ill.
By the 1920's, you're moving out of the more gruesome treatment that really look like torture (though it's not much of an improvement even if they did it out of sense that it was actually helping). 1917 is when the malaria fever treatment was introduced for GPI (general paralysis of the insane, later identified as neurosyphyillis when germ theory emerged).
If you're interested in what was going on in the US, you could look up a bit on the shell shocked soldiers (the term shell shock, however, is kind of specific to WWI). Malaria fever treatment was born from a failed trail of trying to treat GPI with TB, which was a disease too difficult to control. WWI changed that when they took up malaria which could be controlled with quinine. Allegedly, the fever induced by malaria could treat symptoms of GPI. Insulin-coma therapy was introduced in 1927, Metrazol shock therapy introduced in 1934 but replaced in favor of electroshock therapy b/c the convulsions from Metrazol were so violent that they caused injury. ETC was introduced in 1937. A word about ETC, however, is that when it was first introduced, it was intended for the schizophrenics unlike today when it's mostly intended for the severely depressed.
Psychosurgery was first introduced in 1935, and brought to the us in 1937 (maybe check out LAST RESORT by Jack Pressman). WWII's introduction of machine guns (bullets having the capacity to injure in very discrete, focused manners) and primate experiments (Yerkes primate research center & john fulton's research lab in Yale) brought about psychosurgery. First performed by Egas Moniz(1949 Nobel Prize winner) in 1935 (a form of lobotomy). Later, it was picked up by the infamous Walter Freeman (the guy with the lobotomobile. Sallie Ellen Ionesco might be a point of reference as she was the first woman to receive the transorbital lobotomy - keep in mind though that there are other types of lobotomy that came before and look up Howard Dully, it might help).
Once you start hitting mid 1940's, you're now approaching the Neo-freudian age when everyone starts blaming mothers, etc. etc. etc. As in, the word "mom" is actually a derogatory word for mothers.
Despite all this kind of negative stuff, you could almost say that psychology and psychiatry was taking a turn for the better. Prior to the somatic treatments, the general consensus was that the mentally ill were basically doomed to their fate, the change in attitude that patients might be able to be cured was a huge turnaround, especially b/c they were kind of looked down on people who were also morally questionable (this moral/medical quandary goes way way back though to the birth of psychiatry).
Hope that helps. If you need sources or something, I might be able to help although they're mostly scholarly articles and old, old sources.
Just as a context, pre-1920's is US coming off its "Progressive Era" when people were all about "mental hygiene" and there was a paradigm shift in how mental health (which is a word more or less introduced in that era). Also the same time around which things like "maladjustment" and "feeble-mindedness" and the idea of the 'juvenile delinquent' came to be. What might help is the Buck vs. Bell trial on sterilizing mentally ill people for insight into public perception as well as treatment of the mentally ill.
By the 1920's, you're moving out of the more gruesome treatment that really look like torture (though it's not much of an improvement even if they did it out of sense that it was actually helping). 1917 is when the malaria fever treatment was introduced for GPI (general paralysis of the insane, later identified as neurosyphyillis when germ theory emerged).
If you're interested in what was going on in the US, you could look up a bit on the shell shocked soldiers (the term shell shock, however, is kind of specific to WWI). Malaria fever treatment was born from a failed trail of trying to treat GPI with TB, which was a disease too difficult to control. WWI changed that when they took up malaria which could be controlled with quinine. Allegedly, the fever induced by malaria could treat symptoms of GPI. Insulin-coma therapy was introduced in 1927, Metrazol shock therapy introduced in 1934 but replaced in favor of electroshock therapy b/c the convulsions from Metrazol were so violent that they caused injury. ETC was introduced in 1937. A word about ETC, however, is that when it was first introduced, it was intended for the schizophrenics unlike today when it's mostly intended for the severely depressed.
Psychosurgery was first introduced in 1935, and brought to the us in 1937 (maybe check out LAST RESORT by Jack Pressman). WWII's introduction of machine guns (bullets having the capacity to injure in very discrete, focused manners) and primate experiments (Yerkes primate research center & john fulton's research lab in Yale) brought about psychosurgery. First performed by Egas Moniz(1949 Nobel Prize winner) in 1935 (a form of lobotomy). Later, it was picked up by the infamous Walter Freeman (the guy with the lobotomobile. Sallie Ellen Ionesco might be a point of reference as she was the first woman to receive the transorbital lobotomy - keep in mind though that there are other types of lobotomy that came before and look up Howard Dully, it might help).
Once you start hitting mid 1940's, you're now approaching the Neo-freudian age when everyone starts blaming mothers, etc. etc. etc. As in, the word "mom" is actually a derogatory word for mothers.
Despite all this kind of negative stuff, you could almost say that psychology and psychiatry was taking a turn for the better. Prior to the somatic treatments, the general consensus was that the mentally ill were basically doomed to their fate, the change in attitude that patients might be able to be cured was a huge turnaround, especially b/c they were kind of looked down on people who were also morally questionable (this moral/medical quandary goes way way back though to the birth of psychiatry).
Hope that helps. If you need sources or something, I might be able to help although they're mostly scholarly articles and old, old sources.
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