Insulin treatment in psychiatry

The origins of insulin use in psychiatry In the course of medical history it has often happened that a treatment which is effective in one condition is applied to others, only to be abandoned when it is found to be ineffective or a better treatment is discovered. Insulin is an example of such a therapy which was initiated without any firm scientific basis, eagerly taken up by psychiatrists worldwide, only to be discarded some twenty years later. After its preparation and use in Toronto by Banting and Beat in 1922, insulin was soon adopted for the treatment of diabetes mellitus throughout the world, changing life for the patients and virtually freeing them from a death sentence. The clinical observations which probably led to the use of insulin in psychiatry were the return of patients ’ weight to normal and the induction of sleepiness and coma with insulin overdose. Kalinowsky et al.l record that insulin was initially used in psychiatry to quieten excited patients, in delirium tremens, in cases of food refusal and to build up ’run down ’ patients. The first reference found is in 1926; it deals with delirium tremens2 and is referred to by P6tzl in a short