These side effects included moodiness, intellectual deficiencies and lack of initiative, poor judgment and seizures. The target problem that was usually remedied by lobotomy was depression. At that time the eradication of depression, despite all other side effects, was considered fortunate.
Times are changing however, and surgical procedures such as lobotomy are now considered barbaric. We have to realize however, that at the time this procedure was practiced, there were no advanced psychiatric drugs or electric stimulation for the brain. Even today’s psychiatric medicines are not without side effects, though maybe lesser in magnitude than lobotomy after effects. Still lobotomy was responsible for curing many types of mental disorders related to frontal lobes, and that was a true achievement at that time.
We have to remember that the advancement in medical profession that we are seeing today is not the result of biologists’ research; it is the result of a combination of researches from Chemistry, electronics, and physics. Thus the blame for lack of proper mental medication doesn’t go only to the “doctors”.