10 Unbelievable Psychiatric Treatments That Will Leave You Stunned

by Dan Greenberg

Visiting the doctor was never meant to be a fun way to spend your day. But if you're hesitant to lie down on a psychiatrist’s couch or wary of swallowing pills, just remember: It could be a lot worse. Think having a hole drilled into your skull kind of worse.

1. INSULIN COMA-THERAPY

The trend of coma therapy started in 1927 when Viennese doctor Manfred Sakel accidentally overdosed one of his diabetic patients with insulin, sending her into a coma. What could have been a disastrous mistake turned into a groundbreaking discovery. The woman, a drug addict, woke up and found her craving for morphine completely gone. Sakel, not learning from his first blunder, repeated the same ‘mistake’ with another patient, who also claimed to be cured. Soon after, Sakel began deliberately using the therapy on more patients, boasting a 90% recovery rate, particularly among schizophrenics. Strangely, though, the reasons behind Sakel's success in treatment are still unclear.

The theory was that a large insulin dose causes blood sugar levels to crash, which deprives the brain of fuel and induces a coma. But why this state of unconsciousness was beneficial for psychiatric patients is still a mystery. Regardless, the use of insulin therapy began to decline, mainly due to its dangerous nature. Falling into a coma is no light matter, and between one and two percent of patients treated with this method died as a result.

2. TREPANATION

Life in ancient times was full of dangers. Between battles, drunken brawls, and the occasional encounter with a poorly trained pig, it's no wonder ancient skulls often have large holes. However, not all of these holes were the result of random accidents. Over the centuries, archaeologists have uncovered skulls with neatly cut, circular openings that appear to have been made long before the person passed away. These intentional fractures were part of one of the earliest psychiatric treatments known as trepanation. The idea behind this practice was that insanity was caused by demons trapped inside the skull, and by drilling a hole in the head, the demons could escape—thus, the patient would be cured and the madness would vanish. Voila!

Despite how strange the theory may sound and the lack of modern anesthetics, trepanation wasn’t limited to just a few cultures. From the Neolithic period to the early 20th century, people around the world used this procedure to treat various ailments. As medical science advanced, less invasive methods replaced it. However, not everyone abandoned trepanation. In fact, there are still enthusiasts today, and they even have organizations dedicated to the practice, such as the International Trepanation Advocacy Group.

3. ROTATIONAL THERAPY

Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a physician, philosopher, and scientist, but his expertise in those fields was questionable at best. His ideas often weren't taken seriously, perhaps because he liked to record them in poorly written poetry (for example, "By immutable immortal laws / Impress'd in Nature by the great first cause, / Say, Muse! How rose from elemental strife / Organic forms, and kindled into life"). He also had some outlandish theories, one of which was his spinning-couch therapy. Darwin believed that sleep could heal illnesses, and spinning rapidly was an effective way to induce it.

At first, Darwin's idea didn’t get much attention, but later, American physician Benjamin Rush adapted the concept for psychiatric treatment. Rush thought that spinning could reduce brain congestion and, in turn, treat mental disorders. He was mistaken. Instead of healing, Rush’s patients ended up simply feeling dizzy. Today, rotating chairs are mainly used to study vertigo and space sickness.

4. HYDROTHERAPY

If you imagine "hydrotherapy" as something luxurious, like Hollywood stars indulging in scented, relaxing baths, you probably weren't an early 20th-century psychiatric patient. Building on the idea that water has a calming effect, old-school psychiatrists tried to treat various conditions using water-based therapies. For example, patients with too much energy were submerged in warm, relaxing baths, while those feeling sluggish were treated with invigorating sprays.

Some doctors, however, took the idea a bit too far, prescribing treatments that seemed more torturous than therapeutic. One involved wrapping the patient in ice-cold, water-soaked towels, essentially mummifying them. Another required patients to remain in a bath for hours, or even days, strapped in with only bathroom breaks allowed. To top it off, some physicians used high-pressure jets of water. In at least one case, a patient was tied to a wall in a crucifix-like position and blasted with water from a fire hose. As with many extreme therapies, hydrotherapy eventually gave way to psychiatric medications, which were more effective.

5. MESMERISM

Much like Yoda, Austrian physician Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) believed that an invisible force flowed through everything, and that disruptions in this force caused illness and discomfort. However, Mesmer’s theories wouldn’t have helped Luke Skywalker much. His idea was that the moon’s gravity influenced the body’s fluids, much like it affected the tides of the ocean, causing certain diseases to rise and fall with the lunar phases. The challenge, then, was to figure out how to combat gravity's negative effects. Mesmer’s solution: magnets. Since both gravity and magnetism involved attraction, he believed placing magnets on specific parts of the body could reverse the disruptive effects of lunar gravity and restore the natural flow of bodily fluids.

Surprisingly, many patients hailed the treatment as a miracle cure, but the medical community dismissed it as mere superstition, attributing Mesmer’s successes to the placebo effect. Despite his discrediting, Mesmer left a lasting legacy. Today, he is recognized as the father of modern hypnosis for his accidental discovery of the power of suggestion, and his name lives on in the English word mesmerize.

6. MALARIA THERAPY

Ah, if only we were talking about a treatment for malaria. Instead, we’re discussing malaria as therapy—specifically, using it as a cure for syphilis. In the early 1900s, Viennese neurologist Wagner von Jauregg proposed treating syphilis patients with blood infected with malaria. Unsurprisingly, these patients would develop malaria, which triggered a high fever that helped destroy the syphilis bacteria. Afterward, they were treated with quinine, the malaria drug, and sent on their way, cured and healthier. While the method had some unpleasant side effects—like that intense, prolonged fever—it proved effective, and was far better than the alternative. Von Jauregg even won the Nobel Prize for malaria therapy, and it remained in use until penicillin was introduced as a safer, more reliable option for treating syphilis.

7. CHEMICALLY INDUCED SEIZURES

Doctors aren't always known for their impeccable reasoning, as demonstrated by seizure therapy. Hungarian pathologist Ladislas von Meduna pioneered this odd treatment, hypothesizing that because schizophrenics rarely suffered from epilepsy and often seemed calm and happy after a seizure, inducing seizures in schizophrenics could make them calmer. Von Meduna experimented with several drugs to provoke seizures, including strychnine, caffeine, and absinthe, before settling on metrazol, a substance that stimulates the circulatory and respiratory systems. Despite claiming the treatment cured most of his patients, critics argued that the method was dangerous and poorly understood.

To this day, the exact reason why seizures might alleviate certain symptoms of schizophrenia is unclear. However, many scientists believe that the convulsions might trigger the release of chemicals that the patient's brain lacks. In the end, the serious side effects—like broken bones and memory loss—discouraged both patients and doctors from continuing the practice.

8. PHRENOLOGY

At the turn of the 19th century, German physician Franz Gall introduced phrenology, the belief that a person’s character could be read from the bumps and indentations on their skull. Gall theorized that the brain’s frequently used areas would grow larger, like muscles, causing bumps on the skull. He then tried to correlate these bumps with particular traits. For example, lumps near the ears suggested a destructive personality, a ridge at the top of the head indicated kindness, and thick folds at the back of the neck pointed to a sexual nature. Despite its widespread popularity, phrenology failed to make a lasting impact in medicine, as it could only inaccurately diagnose traits without offering any real treatment. By the early 1900s, the phrenology craze faded as modern neuroscience took control of the study of the brain.

9. HYSTERIA THERAPY

In the past, any woman experiencing mental distress was often classified as a victim of hysteria. Hippocrates, the Greek physician, was the first to popularize this term, believing that it encompassed everything from nervousness to fainting to sudden muteness. According to him, the cause was a wandering womb. Plato, curious about this theory, pondered the question of where the womb wandered. He proposed that when the uterus "remains unfruitful long beyond its proper time, it gets discontented and angry and wanders in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives women to extremity." To treat this condition, remedies focused on "calming" the uterus, with some suggesting unpleasant-smelling substances to drive it from the chest. Plato, however, believed that the only true solution was marriage and childbearing, as the uterus always returned to its proper place when the time came for pregnancy. While "womb-calming" treatments have long since faded, the diagnosis of hysteria persisted until the 20th century, when medical professionals identified conditions like depression, PTSD, and phobias.

10. LOBOTOMY

The infamous modern lobotomy was the creation of António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician. Moniz theorized that mental illness stemmed from issues with the neurons in the frontal lobe, located just behind the forehead. Inspired by the case of a monkey whose violent behavior had been quelled by cutting the frontal lobe, Moniz decided to experiment with this technique on his patients. He believed that the procedure could treat mental illness while leaving other cognitive functions largely intact. Though the supporting evidence for his claim was somewhat lacking, Moniz received widespread praise for his work. In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions, marking one of the more controversial moments in the history of the Karolinska Institute.

When the lobotomy craze reached America, Dr. Walter Freeman embarked on a nationwide tour in his so-called "lobotomobile"—yes, that was actually its name—performing the procedure on a wide range of patients, from catatonic schizophrenics to bored housewives. Freeman's mobile method involved inserting a small ice pick into the eye socket and moving it around in the brain. While some believed Freeman had discovered a miraculous solution to prevent lifelong institutionalization for these patients, others pointed out that Freeman lacked surgical training, ignored sterile practices, and often failed to provide precise details about his patients' recoveries.

As the number of lobotomies grew, an alarming issue emerged: the patients weren’t just calmer, they were essentially lifeless, hardly reacting to anything around them. Coupled with the negative portrayal of lobotomies in films and books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the procedure quickly fell out of favor.