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Before the advent of antipsychotic drugs, the treatment of schizophrenia had been extremely unsuccessful. The next few paragraphs will explain three false therapies of schizophrenia.

Insulin is one of the hormones of the body that regulate the sugar level in the blood. In a normal person, insulin is released to lower the sugar level in the blood if the level is high. It is used to treat diabetics who cannot produce insulin on their own. However, if too much insulin is given, the sugar level in the blood will be so low that coma occurs. This is fatal. In 1930s, the insulin coma therapy was falsely regarded as a method that helps treat schizophrenia. Doctors in Europe and the United States rushed to induce insulin coma in severe schizophrenics. As a result, some patients died, without any evidence that excessive insulin actually bettered the symptoms.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is another example of a therapy once widely used with little evidence of its efficacy. In ECT, brief pulses of electricity are passed through the brain. ECT has proved very effective in helping some people with severe depression. But it has little or no effect on their illness.

Perhaps the most brutal "therapy" for schizophrenia is the frontal lobotomy. A frontal lobotomy removes parts of the front of the brain. It is proposed that the site of schizophrenic's mental problems lay in the brain's frontal lobes. The surgery did produce a quieter patient, and it was used on tens of thousands of schizophrenics in Europe and the United States. There is no evidence that frontal lobotomy provided any improvement in the disease.