7 - Treating the Mentally Ill

Summary

This chapter centres around the encounter between patient and psychiatrist, and between mandate Palestine and new methods of psychiatric treatment being developed around the world in the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, it focuses on three distinct methods of treatment: patient work or occupational therapy; insulin- and cardiazol-shock therapies; and electro-convulsive therapy. All in different ways sought to work (on) the body to cure the mind and were introduced into private and government mental health institutions in mandate Palestine in the decade before 1948. Though these techniques tantalised with the promise of transcending context through their universal applicability, this chapter highlights instead how these psychiatric techniques travelled to and were deployed within Palestine in a highly uneven way, and attempts to piece together some sense of how patients and their families responded to and understood these treatments as well.