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Wiser people than you have been trying for a century or more and come up with precious little.

We could go back to the 'treatments' in use prior to the introduction of Thorazine in the 1950's. I don't think you would like your loved one to be treated that way.

Well, if you're talking about psychiatric "treatments" such as ice picks driven through eye sockets to lobotomize victims, I would agree with you.

My aunt was on Thorazine for 15 years back in the 50's and 60's. She developed tardive dementia and died at the age of 54 as a complete vegetable. I wouldn't want anybody else's loved one treated that way either.

You and I have gone round and round on this in years past and I don't intend to start again, but I agree with you on the "precious little" comment because that's what the sum total of psychiatric solutions over the years amount to from my vantage point....precious little.

I don't think you would like your loved one to be treated that way.

You make many assumptions based on a few sentences. I do recognize that it is a very complicated situation. My loved one would have me for an advocate where as many of the people I dealt with were being warehoused. I take responsibility for my family so I would have the luxury of trying less harsh drugs and approaches. I realize this would not be practical in most cases. I have some ideas that I do want to get into here. I was simply agreeing that the long term side effects of many of the anti-psychotic medications is a tragedy and worth discussion. This is a site where people discuss articles. No need to get aggressive.

Name one. Wiser people than you have been trying for a century or more and come up with precious little.

We could go back to the 'treatments' in use prior to the introduction of Thorazine in the 1950's. I don't think you would like your loved one to be treated that way.

Perhaps you haven't dug far enough into the history. Between the horrors of Bedlam and the disasters of modern psychiatry, there were the moral treatments of the 18th century, which actually were very successful (albeit potentially quite costly to implement and maintain).

For the sake of brevity, let's just stick to the moral treatments in the U.S. which were inspired by the progress made by Pinel and Tuke in Europe. The basic idea here was that the mad had an inner capacity for regaining self-control, for recovering their reason. The ultimate source of their recovery lay inside themselves, and not in the external powers of medicine.

The first moral treatment asylum was opened by the Philadelphia Quakers in 1817, and others followed. McLean Hospital opened in 1818, in New York City in the year 1821 Bloomingdale Asylum opened where you can now find Columbia University, and Hartfored Retreat opened in Connecticut. Etc.

These places kept relatively few patients -- no more than 250 at any single facility. They were located in the country, surrounded by flowerbeds and gardens, where the mentally ill could take their fill of fresh air and find solace in tending to plants. They took great pains to design the architecture with the highest aesthetic values, mindful that patients are especially sensitive to environmental stimuli and uplifted by beauty and order. And perhaps most importantly, the superintendent of the facility was chosen in particular for his temparement -- reasonable, humane, possessing dignity and stability of character, mild and gentle, compassionate...

The patients were kept busy with activities -- gardening, playing games, educational pursuits. Theater groups performed; speakers were invited to give talks at meals. Restraints were used only as a last resort. They rewarded good behavior. Those who were disruptive were placed on ground floors furtherest from the social center of the asylum. Those who behaved got the preferred rooms on the top floor, and they were also given extra liberties. They were allowed to stroll about the grounds and were given the privilege of going into town, as long as they pledged not to drink and to return to the asylum on time.

This treatment appears to have been remarkably successful, according to modern historians. In the first decades of moral treatment, before the asylums were taken over by neurologists who changed everything, 35-80% of all admitted patients were discharged within a year's time, and the majority of those discharged were viewed as having been cured. That mean that their disturbing bheavior and psychotic thoughts had largely disappeared.

At Pennsylvania Hospital, during the tenure of Thomas Kirkbride, results were very good. Of 8,546 "insane" patients admitted from 1841 to 1882, 45% were discharged as cured, and another 25% discharged as improved. A long-term follow-up study of 984 patients discharged from Worcester asylum from 1833 to 1846, which was conducted in the 1880s, found that 58% had remained well throughout their lived. Another 7% had relapsed but had subsequently recovered and returned to the community. Only 35% had become chronically ill or had died while still mentally ill.

These results are far better than the terrible 8% recovery rate among schizophrenics in the U.S. today -- a statistics that pales even in comparison to recovery rates in third world countries that do not have anti-psychotics available for use.