Imagine sitting at home all day, showing no emotion to the outside world. This is what happens to people who have lobotomies. Mental disorders represent a serious health problem worldwide. They can affect people starting at birth or develop with age. Treatments for these disorders were not very effective until the development of different types of drugs in the 20th century. Before these drugs were invented, procedures such as lobotomy were considered an acceptable treatment for some types of mental disorders. The invention of the lobotomy was considered a medical miracle because it helped cure some psychiatric illnesses, but it had negative effects on many of the patients who received this procedure. No one denies that by discovering psychosurgery, a temporary cure for some mental illnesses was thought to have been discovered. Prefrontal lobotomy is a surgical procedure in which the prefrontal cortex is detached from other areas of the brain (Kalat 103). During this procedure, the prefrontal cortex is damaged or the connection between it and the rest of the brain is severed (Kalat 103). This means that lobotomies are performed by surgeons who destroy the connection from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain, and this can render the frontal lobe unusable. Originally, doctors proposed lobotomy because they thought intense emotional and cognitive disturbance was due to atypical neural pathways in the brain (Piotrowski 1119). Psychosurgery could perhaps help find new cures for some major psychiatric diseases because doctors hypothesized that destroying this abnormal brain tissue would help cure those diseases (Piotrowski 1119). Initially doctors thought it would destroy......half of the paper......logy."Antonio Egas Moniz." Gale: n. page Science in context. Network. May 4, 2014. .Kalat, James W. Biological Psychology. 10th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.Kochhar, Piya, and Dave Isay. "'My Lobotomy': The Journey of Howard Dully." NPR. NPR, November 16, 2005. Web. May 7, 2014. Piotrowski, Nancy A., ed. Hearing - Parental alienation syndrome. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. Print. vol. 3 of Psychology and Mental Health. 5 vols.