ABSTRACT
Since the days of Freud and Kraeplin and well into the mid-twentieth century, we seemed to have had only two widely recognized choices to treat patients with psychological disorders: long-term institutionalization (and, mostly, significant sedation) for the most severely ill and intensive psychoanalysis for those able to function outside the psychiatric hospitals. The decision of whether to sedate or hospitalize patients was primarily made on the basis of the degree of disruption these patients caused to those around them. Those most severely disruptive (e.g., violent) were usually sedated, and those patients were most likely to be institutionalized.
