78 lines
3.0 KiB
Markdown
78 lines
3.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2015-02-14T19:56:34.000Z'
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title: Brain Wound Eliminates Man's Mental Illness (1988)
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url: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/25/us/brain-wound-eliminates-man-s-mental-illness.html
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author: denysonique
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points: 47
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 30
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1423943794
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_denysonique
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- story_9050597
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objectID: '9050597'
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---
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Correction Appended
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Correction Appended
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**LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24—** A mentally ill young man who shot himself in
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the head in a suicide attempt suffered a brain injury that apparently
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eliminated his phobia of germs and his obsession with washing his hands,
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doctors say.
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The .22-caliber slug destroyed the section of the brain responsible for
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his disabling obsessive-compulsive behavior without causing any other
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brain damage, his doctor said in a report in Physician's Weekly, a
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British journal of psychiatry. Victims of the disorder typically have an
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inexplicable compulsion to repeat activities over and over.
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The afflicted man, now a straight-A college student, tried to kill
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himself five years ago, when he was 19 years old, said Dr. Leslie
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Solyom, a psychiatrist at Shaughnessy Hospital in Vancouver, British
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Columbia. Effects of His Behavior
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The man, identified only as George, washed his hands hundreds of times a
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day and took frequent showers, Dr. Solyom said. The behavior had forced
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him to drop out of school and quit his job.
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Dr. Solyom treated him for more than a year before he tried suicide.
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''George was also very depressed and told his mother that his life was
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so wretched that he would rather die,'' Dr. Solyom related. ''She said,
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'So look George, if your life is so wretched, just go and shoot
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yourself.' So George went to the basement, stuck a .22-caliber rifle in
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his mouth and pulled the trigger.''
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The bullet lodged in the left front lobe of the brain. Surgeons removed
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it but could not get out all the fragments.
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''When he was transferred to our hospital three weeks later, he had
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hardly any compulsions left,'' Dr. Solyom said.
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George had also retained the same I.Q. he had before becoming ill, Dr.
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Solyum said, and he returned to school, got a new job and is now in his
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second year of college. \#3% in U.S. May Be Compulsive The story was
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also reported in today's issue of The Los Angeles Times.
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New research indicates that as much as 3 percent of the United States
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population displays some obsessive-compulsive behavior, said Dr. Michael
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Jenike, a psychiatrist at Harvard University.
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Conventional psychotherapy is useless in such victims, Dr. Jenike said.
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The disorder is most effectively treated with a combination of
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antidepressant drugs and behavioral therapy.
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As a last resort, neurosurgeons will occasionally remove part of the
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left front lobe of the brain, where the obsessive behavior is thought to
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originate. The operation is probably performed between 10 and 30 times a
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year in the United States, with mixed results, said Dr. Thomas
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Ballantine of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
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