Medical Interventions That Failed the Test of Time: Deep Sleep Therapy and Psychosurgery

From insulin-induced comas for the treatment of depression to deep sleep therapy for anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, patients suffering from psychiatric disease have intermittently faced a minefield of iatrogenic disasters.


Between 1962 and 1979, at Chelmsford Hospital in Sydney, Australia, 26 patients died as a direct result of deep sleep therapy and 22 committed suicide after treatment. The Medical Journal of Australia in 1973 published a review by Dr Bailey of 150 cases of 'cingulotractotomy', his preferred version of psychosurgery.

Dr Jon Fogarty

Whatever next......
Themis