Psychological Measures As Used to Predict Psychiatric Improvement and to Assess Behavioural Changes Following Prefrontal Lobotomy

The advent of the various tranquillizing drugs during the past few years and their increasing use in mental hospitals have had the effect of drastically decreasing the number of lobotomies performed. At our hospital, e.g., the last lobotomy was performed in November, 1954; previous to that time 131 such operations had been done in seven years. To all intents and purposes lobotomy is a therapeutic procedure no longer used for psychiatric purposes. This may change, of course—it may be decided that for certain patients a lobotomy is still the treatment of choice. Or, it may be that in the years to come lobotomy will be of interest chiefly to medical historians.