Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: 1960s

  • The 1960s in North American psychiatry

    Mary SeemanToronto, Ontario, Canada When I graduated from medical school in 1960, an unprecedented wave of optimism was sweeping the field of psychiatry. Effective antipsychotic medication, the offspring of chlorpromazine,1 was clearing out mental asylums. New antidepressants, such as imipramine and its many progeny, had recently come on the market.2 Anxiolytics such as meprobamate promised…