This is Why Lobotomy is the Worst Surgery in History

So, in short, all Lobotomy did was reducing aggressive yelling mental patients into quite vegetable-like patients. Much easier to handle, but not cured at all.

It's disgusting how simply being related to someone could give you the authority to lobotomize them.

I read that Rose Kennedy was lobotomized because as she grew older like most young women she was curious about men, wanted to date and socialize as her sisters did. Worried that she would cause a family scandal and ruin the families political aspirations her parents chose to have her "spayed" so she would behave. Nothing I read ever said she was violent. I think that was the story her parents told to keep the public from knowing that the Kennedys sacrificed one of their daughters to benefit their sons.

My aunt was given a lobotomy... She never reached learning past a certain age (12 I think), was gang raped (in her teens) and ran off with a man (who basically kidnapped her and got her pregnant, again while in her teens). So they gave her a lobotomy. She was not better for it. In fact she soon became a ward of the state and was put on so so many medications. Brakes my heart because I know a better person is inside and can't get out.

I feel really bad for Howard and rosemary. They both ended up in terrible conditions. Actually, I feel bad for all lobotomy patients. I’m glad that surgery was banned.

It's disturbing to know that if I were dealing with my current mental illnesses just a few decades earlier, I would have likely been lobotomized.

I think what makes lobotomy much more horrible than any other widely spread medical procedure, is that it simply alters who you are completely. When asked "who are you" or "how would you define yourself", one rarely starts listing of their physical traits and more often than not starts to describe their personality. Their interests, beliefs and aspirations. I firmly believe that these are the things that actually make you, well, "you". It is an absolutely terrifying thought that someone might completely alter this and in a sence kill what you consider to be "you", and that they could do this legally and maybe even justifying it all by thinking they were helping you..

Not only is lobotomy a frightening surgery that basically castrates a person’s nervous system, but it was used many times on mentally ill people who needed real help, but they didn’t know how else to treat them. I’m glad we’ve come a long way with medicine, especially with mental illnesses. But who knows just how many brilliant yet troubled people have been affected by this procedure.

Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy story is awful. In the middle of her lobotomy, the doctor asked her to sing as part of the test. One wrong move, she stopped singing and her dad shipped her off to a mental institution to hide her from public eye. The rest of her family didn’t even know what had happened to her because the father did all this, including the lobotomy, in secret.

I suffer epilepsy and, besides medication, lobotomies are sometimes offered. The neurologists can narrow down the troubled part of the mind where the siezure stems from.... But they still end up removing that entire portion of the mind! My family and I investigated the possibility but discovered through testing that the procedure would have messed up too many of my other abilities to make it seem allowable. Now we control my seizures with advanced medications and I have been safe for over 20 years.

My grandfather I was named after was a war veteran with severe PTSD. This treatment was suggested for him and he researched it and begged them not to do it as he knew they didn't know what they were doing. He was taken against his will and this was done to him. He lived out his last days in a vegetative state.

They were used as a way to silence the trauma of male and female victims of sexual assault and abuse. Women and children in particular had no say over it and their husbands and parents, who were often their abusers, would do it to stop them acting out and to silence them. It's not different to my incredibly abusive mother putting my sister on psych meds at 10y.o that were so strong she became a zombie. Psych pros and my mother considered it a success as she no longer acted out (about the abuse we were suffering). I learned to be quiet and was sold to an older man when I was 16 who also tried to have me committed when he wanted the inheritance my father (who I met once) had left me. Psych nurses were all too keen to lock me up and give me meds that made it impossible for me to think. It was agony. Thankfully an independent reviewer saved me or I might be there still today ( Abusive man did try to kill me after I got out though). My grandfather was also committed in 1940's after he suffered a head injury. He was starved and tortured before dying there. It was one of Australia's worse asylums.

I was placed in an adolescent unit for school phobia at the age of 13. It was like being in an open prison. My belongings were searched when I arrived, and I was regularly forced to take high doses of medication that knocked me out. If I'd been born 10 years earlier I've no doubt that I could have been subjected to a lobotomy. Young people in these places have no human rights whatsoever.

You missed some facts about Rosemary Kennedy, God, bless her soul. Upon her birth, the doctor was late. Her mother closed up her legs in order to prevent her from coming out of her. They literally pushed her head back in. The doctor arrived about 2 hours later. The lack of oxygen made her growth stunted since the day she was born. However, some people also believed that she might suffer ADHD or any other disorder that was not yet diagnosed back then. Her father is ashamed by her slow growth as compared to her other siblings who accomplish more things than her. His son's election pressured him further to "fix" her. He secretly signed her up for a lobotomy procedure. Nobody in the family knew about this horrifying event, and no, not even Rosemary herself knew what she was going under the knife for. The surgery failed and her mind regressed to a toddler. She spent decades in isolation from the rest of her family. Her father prohibited anyone from visiting her. He came up with many excuses to keep her away from his family. He never once visited her. They eventually found out about her condition and they became advocates for raising awareness on disabilities ever since.

I remembered a quote where it said, "the world isn't round, nor is it a cube. Its ruined." The world IS ruined. Even if there were a same number of pure, kind-hearted souls as broken and rotten ones, it doesn't change the fact that its already been damaged, just like these poor victims. Let's hope that lobotomy never becomes legal ever again, because its giving me the memories of the brain surgery in Saw X.

its scary to think that as someone whos neurodivergent, i would most likely have gotten a lobotomy at a really young age if i lived back then

I'm not usually bothered by things, but the lobotomy really gets under my skin. A lot of people were in fact still conscious while undergoing the procedure. In Denmark, the last lobotomy was performed in 1987. My mom was 24 at the time, and the thought that she, statistically speaking, could have had a lobotomy, is disturbing.

The fact that women were lobotomized WAY more than men says a lot about what this surgery was really all about.

honestly, considering how I am, it's pretty scary to think that if it weren't banned, I could have already had one right now 😕

Howard wrote a book called "my lobotomy " one of my favorite books. Every parent of a "wild child" should read this book, you get to hear the child's side from his memory