---
created_at: '2015-02-14T19:56:34.000Z'
title: Brain Wound Eliminates Man's Mental Illness (1988)
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/25/us/brain-wound-eliminates-man-s-mental-illness.html
author: denysonique
points: 47
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 30
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1423943794
_tags:
- story
- author_denysonique
- story_9050597
objectID: '9050597'

---
Correction Appended

Correction Appended

**LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24—** A mentally ill young man who shot himself in
the head in a suicide attempt suffered a brain injury that apparently
eliminated his phobia of germs and his obsession with washing his hands,
doctors say.

The .22-caliber slug destroyed the section of the brain responsible for
his disabling obsessive-compulsive behavior without causing any other
brain damage, his doctor said in a report in Physician's Weekly, a
British journal of psychiatry. Victims of the disorder typically have an
inexplicable compulsion to repeat activities over and over.

The afflicted man, now a straight-A college student, tried to kill
himself five years ago, when he was 19 years old, said Dr. Leslie
Solyom, a psychiatrist at Shaughnessy Hospital in Vancouver, British
Columbia. Effects of His Behavior

The man, identified only as George, washed his hands hundreds of times a
day and took frequent showers, Dr. Solyom said. The behavior had forced
him to drop out of school and quit his job.

Dr. Solyom treated him for more than a year before he tried suicide.

''George was also very depressed and told his mother that his life was
so wretched that he would rather die,'' Dr. Solyom related. ''She said,
'So look George, if your life is so wretched, just go and shoot
yourself.' So George went to the basement, stuck a .22-caliber rifle in
his mouth and pulled the trigger.''

The bullet lodged in the left front lobe of the brain. Surgeons removed
it but could not get out all the fragments.

''When he was transferred to our hospital three weeks later, he had
hardly any compulsions left,'' Dr. Solyom said.

George had also retained the same I.Q. he had before becoming ill, Dr.
Solyum said, and he returned to school, got a new job and is now in his
second year of college. \#3% in U.S. May Be Compulsive The story was
also reported in today's issue of The Los Angeles Times.

New research indicates that as much as 3 percent of the United States
population displays some obsessive-compulsive behavior, said Dr. Michael
Jenike, a psychiatrist at Harvard University.

Conventional psychotherapy is useless in such victims, Dr. Jenike said.
The disorder is most effectively treated with a combination of
antidepressant drugs and behavioral therapy.

As a last resort, neurosurgeons will occasionally remove part of the
left front lobe of the brain, where the obsessive behavior is thought to
originate. The operation is probably performed between 10 and 30 times a
year in the United States, with mixed results, said Dr. Thomas
Ballantine of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
