Medicine: Pills for Mental Illness?

Mental-health experts across the U.S were choosing up sides in a controversy over a new drug. From California's Modesto State Hospital came enthusiastic reports of success in using reserpine (TIME, June 21) to calm down the most disturbed patients in the back wards, and to lift the most depressed out of their lethargy, thus making both types more responsive to psychiatric treatment. Three California doctors used such words as "dramatic" and "incredible" to describe the improvement wrought by reserpine* in 80% of the 74 patients on whom they tried it. They...

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