Early History
Mental health care has come out of the dark ages only recently. Social workers specializing in mental health in the early 20th century facilitated patient care by putting clients together with the most appropriate caregiver or finding a state-run institution that might house them.
- "Mental hospitals" were full of patients suffering from violent criminal impulses, psychotic delusions and various emotional disorders all the way down to stress induced nervous breakdowns. Little else could be done to treat serious mental illness.
- At the dawn of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud informed the well-to-do upper middle class that their behavior was influenced by unconscious memories, thoughts, and urges. Only a lifetime of analysis could enable sufferers to cope with the deep traumas they had suffered. Psychoanalysis became the mental health treatment of choice for almost 60 years until the invention of Valium in 1963.
- Diazepam, better known by the trade name Valium, belongs to a group of chemically similar sedative and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs called benzodiazepines.
- Valium, ("Mother's Little Helper") quickly became the best-selling medication in the United States between 1963 and 1982 and sales peaked in 1978 with more than 2.3 billion pills sold that year.
- Goodbye - Psychoanalysis / Hello - Psychotropics.