Madness and medicine.

Narrated by Howard K. Smith, this 1970s ABC News programme attempts to define what mental illness really is, and looks at many areas of psychiatric care and mental health. It is a fascinating insight into notions of mental health care in the 1970s. We hear from former hospitalised patients and a host of psychiatrists on subjects such as hospitalisation, drug therapy, electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery. We see one patient undergoing electric shock treatments and one young man given a frontal lobe lobotomy.