1600s

• In the 1600s, Native American medicine men called upon supernatural powers to fight mental illness. Rituals of purification and atonement were common.
  
  

1812

• In 1812, Benjamin Rush published the first American textbook of psychiatry. Humane treatment of the ill was called for in this groundbreaking text.
  
  

1909

• In 1909, Sigmund Freud visited America to hold a lecture on psychoanalysis. The lecture was held at Clark University in Massachusetts.
  
  

1936

• In 1936, the first human frontal lobotomy was performed. During the next 20 years, 20,000 of these operations were performed.
  
  

1952

• In 1952, chlorpromazine, the first conventional antipsychotic drug, was introduced. This medication is used to treat schizophrenia, as well as other major mental illnesses.
  
  

1990

• In 1990, brain imaging was found to be useful to chart the development of mental illnesses.