In 1946, when this broadcast discussion from The Northwestern Reviewing Stand first broadcast, Mental Health was still considered mysterious and an abstract concept. Great strides had been made in Psychiatry since the beginning of the 20th century. Psychiatric therapies, beginning with treatments used in the 1920s to the 1940s that included induced fever and coma, lobotomy, and electroconvulsive treatments would be considered barbaric by standards in the 2000’s. However, the introduction of antipsychotic drugs, such as chlorpromazine and tranquilizers, beginning in the 1950s provided more effective treatments and thus contributed toward integrating psychiatry back into the broader field of medicine. At the same time, the hitherto subordinated and largely ignored group of biological psychiatrists began to focus on the brain and explain mental illnesses in physiological and somatic terms, a development made possible by the introduction of new imaging technologies. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, psychiatry had been reborn. Brain imaging technology and a large and effective psychopharmacological armamentarium placed the specialty squarely within the medical domain.
In this discussion, the issues had to deal with the affects of World War 2 – what was happening with the returning military and the long-term mental and emotional damage caused by years of battle fatigue. Conditions now known as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome weren’t fully understood then and, for the most part, largely ignored at the time.
This discussion from 1946 gives some indication of the state of Mental Health and Psychiatry right after World War 2 and what laid the groundwork for the years to come.
Here is that episode of Northwest Reviewing Stand from Mutual Broadcasting from May 26, 1946.
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