The long history of efforts to treat psychological disorders has included a bewildering mix of methods, harsh and gentle. Well-meaning individuals have cut holes in people’s heads and restrained, bled, or “beat the devil” out of them. But they also have given warm baths and massages and placed people in sunny, serene environments. They have administered drugs. And they have talked with their patients about childhood experiences, current feelings, and maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.
Reformers Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) pushed for gentler, more humane treatments and for constructing mental hospitals. Since the 1950s, drug therapies and community-based treatment programs have replaced most of those hospitals.