I agree that many are worse, for the patient. In using the word superficially I meant to imply the modern treatments are more palatable (I am searching for the right word to use in this case and struggling) for the attendants and witnesses to the treatment, not the patient.
This is true. Drugging a person is not a healing process: it's a punishment, retribution for their moral offenses which may not be punishable as crimes.
If a person complains too much, or becomes a nuisance to society, or disruptive, then they are penalized and sentenced to a "virtual incarceration" by means of drugs and clinical monitoring.
Psychiatric drugs were explicitly developed as a replacement for confinement and physical restraints. The asylum system was shut down deliberately once the technology was in place to turn them out on the streets.
All those homeless you see today are actually imprisoned and being punished. The apparatus is simply invisible to you.
