Hope for the Living Dead: How Thorazine Revolutionized Mental Illness

Today’s treatment of mental illnesses involves medications and humane therapies as mental health is seen with acceptance, understanding, and care. However, prior to the 1950s, people with mental illnesses were seen as people who needed to be kept away from society. They became the living dead, isolated in asylums, and their mental illnesses were treated with ineffective and harmful methods. This paper analyzes the different ways in which the drug Thorazine completely transformed this view and treatment of mental illness. It illustrates the treatment of people with mental illnesses in asylums prior to Thorazine, details the process of Thorazine’s synthesis and spread, and contrasts mental illness before and after Thorazine by dissecting all of Thorazine’s effects.