May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to shed light on how mental health has been addressed through history. Effective treatments for depression, anxiety and dissociative identity disorder were pioneered in the late 20th century. Before that, a lack of intervention options often led to misguided treatments.
Watch these six Retro Report videos to explore the lessons from the history of mental health treatment, and how medical professionals apply these lessons today.
Myths and Misperceptions about Eating Disorders
Throughout the 1970s, singer Karen Carpenter battled an eating disorder. She died at 32 after undergoing a treatment to gain weight, which put a strain on her heart. Eating disorders were long associated with young girls, and seen as a choice rather than a pathology. This misconception has caused a high rate of misdiagnosis among men and people of color. Dive deeper in this Retro Report short documentary.
Covid Deaths Left Orphans. The Stress of That Loss May Carry Lifelong Risks
During the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 200,000 children and teenagers, more than half children of color, lost a parent or caregiver. This public health crisis presented serious physical risks. In 1980, Vincent Felitti began a study that looked at 10 forms of adverse experiences in childhood across 17,000 patients. Dr. Fellitte followed the patients for 20 years and found a connection between exposure to stress and trauma at an early age and future health issues. In this Retro Report short film, we explore how Covid-19 deaths left orphans, and how stress from that loss may carry lifelong risks.
How the Story of ‘Sybil’ Influenced Views of Mental Illness
The American Psychiatry Association first recognized the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder in 1980. The disorder has since been renamed dissociative identity disorder, which recognizes the fragmentation of identity, rather than multiple personalities. Learn more in this Retro Report video and accompanying free lesson plan.
Lobotomy: A Dangerous Fad’s Lingering Effects on Mental Illness Treatment
Walter Freeman and James Watts began performing lobotomies in the mid-1930s. The procedure partially severs the frontal lobes of the brain, often causing more harm than good. But Freeman and Watts framed this experimental intervention as a miracle cure, and performed more than 3.500 surgeries over three decades. Learn more about how these doctors got away with carrying out an experimental procedure on a large scale, as well as current innovations in the field of brain stimulation, in this Retro Report documentary and accompanying lesson plan.
Anorexia and Suicide: A Mother’s Fight for Change
Anna Weston died by suicide after struggling with anorexia, depression, and anxiety for six years. Following her death, her mother, Kitty Weston, founded a residential center to treat eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder. Weston took her experience to the floor of Congress and succeeded in fighting for insurance companies for coverage of long-term treatment for eating disorders. Learn more in this Retro Report video.
Could a Simple Intervention Fight a Suicide Crisis?
Jerome Motto conducted a study of over 3,000 patients in San Francisco who were hospitalized for depression or suicidal thoughts. The doctor and his assistant, Chrisula Asimos, focused on those who had declined follow-up treatment, and sent these patients letters of support over several years. In the first two years after hospitalization, patients who received the letters were half as likely to commit suicide as those who had not. Learn more about Motto and Asimo’s study, and how their intervention has been modernized, in this updated Retro Report short film.
DAGMAR ROTHSCHILD is an education intern at Retro Report. She is an undergraduate at Georgetown, studying International Relations.
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