Psychiatric Treatment for Adolescents in the U.S. in the mid-/late-1970s

[verrucaria]

OK, this is actually for an assignment, but the point of the assignment is to conduct an initial psych assessment of the character. I swear that we are not graded on researching the history of psychiatry.

This assignment is based on the film Ordinary People, not the novel it's based on (which I've never read). According to Wikipedia, there appear

Comments

[lolmac]

I'm not sure how much use this will be to you, given that I've neither seen the movie nor read the book, and I'm not a medical professional or medical historian. I do have one piece of personal anecdotage that might be relevant

[verrucaria]

Thank you very much for your reply--and I'm glad you made it through! Now I realize that the fact that meds aren't mentioned in the movie is probably because they weren't used at all.

P.S. A major reason SSRIs and SNRIs are considered "safer" than the older antidepressants is that it is pretty hard to fatally overdose on them (unless you mix multiple drugs with a similar function).

[lolmac]

And thank you so much for the sweet reply in turn! And that's really interesting about the newer drugs being hard to overdose fatally; it makes a great deal of sense. Now I've learned something today!

[corvideye]

Incidentally, tricyclics are still used for adults, though probably not as widely as SSRIs because the newer drugs tend to have fewer side effects.

I'm wondering about other vectors you've tried... for instance, a phrase like "1970s adolescent depression treatment" starts to bring up some stuff. You could also do a google book search and limit the date... if you have access to a university library, you should be able to search journal databases by date also. Do you have to do the psych assessment in a "period" style, or as a modern person assessing the character and their history?

[verrucaria]

Yeah, in retrospect, I think we were supposed to approach this as if it were all happening today. I ended up having to add a disclaimer to my therapy/treatment plan explaining what I would do today that wouldn't have been available ca. 1980.

I now feel like an idiot about going through the whole historical thing. (Hopefully, my post will help someone else who at some point looks for treatments available to depressed--and possibly PTSD-ish--teens in the late 1970s...)