Mental illnesses can be distressing for those affected and those around them. This has always driven psychiatry to search for effective therapies. Some of the older treatment methods are no longer acceptable from today's perspective. However, they were considered groundbreaking in their time and often raised great hopes of a cure – which were then usually disappointed. Some therapies emerged as incidental by-products, others were developed in the context of major scientific and medical discoveries.
Depending on one's point of view, the causes of mental disorders are thought to lie in biology, biography or social background. This has led to a wide range of therapeutic approaches. From the very beginning, different methods have usually been used in parallel.