In 1988, a man with OCD and extreme germophobia tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head with a rifle. However, he survived, and the bullet completely eliminated his mental disorder without causing any other damage to his brain.

Brain Wound Eliminates Man’s Mental Illness

A mentally ill young man who shot himself in the head in a suicide attempt suffered a brain injury that apparently eliminated his phobia of germs and his obsession with washing his hands, doctors say.

The .22-caliber slug destroyed the section of the brain responsible for his disabling obsessive-compulsive behavior without causing any other brain damage, his doctor said in a report in Physician’s Weekly, a British journal of psychiatry. Victims of the disorder typically have an inexplicable compulsion to repeat activities over and over.

The afflicted man, now a straight-A college student, tried to kill himself five years ago, when he was 19 years old, said Dr. Leslie Solyom, a psychiatrist at Shaughnessy Hospital in Vancouver, Briti… Continue Reading

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/25/us/brain-wound-eliminates-man-s-mental-illness.html