Nise da Silveira
Brazilian psychiatrist (1905-1999) · Brazil · On the map · Artists · Died at 94
The Brazilian psychiatrist who stood against lobotomies, electroshock, and insulin comas when the psychiatric establishment called them progress. She believed mental illness required care, not violence.
Nise da Silveira is read about 281 times a day, in 33 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 1 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
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Born February 15, 1905, Nise da Silveira trained in psychiatry at a time when the field's standard tools were institutionalization, electroconvulsive therapy, insulin shock, and lobotomy. She studied under Carl Jung and spent her career dismantling that orthodoxy from within, insisting that what her colleagues treated with aggression required something closer to understanding. The resistance was her life's work. She died October 30, 1999, having redrawn the boundaries of what psychiatric care could mean in Brazil.
