Review article
Methods of surgical treatment of selected psychiatric illness

Severe psychiatric illnesses of heavy course, refractory on conservative treatment, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression or Tourette syndrome, are more and more frequently the subject of the neurosurgeon\'s interest. This is due to the increasingly better understanding of their neuropathological origin and the better visualization of the human brain, including functional investigations, investigations of activity of defined areas of the brain and illustrating the nervous pathways. The nature of neurosurgical interventions was changed in psychiatric diseases; neuromodulating methods brought amazing progress. The interventions using deep brain stimulation (DBS) bring an advantage due to the possibility of modification of the therapy in each moment even to the disconnection of the stimulating system if it is necessity. At present several aims in the brain are defined where the effectiveness of stimulations has been confirmed in psychiatric diseases. Those are: anterior limb of the internal capsule (OCD, depression); 25 Brodman’s field (depression); nucleus accumbens (OCD, Tourette syndrome, depression); vagus nerve (depression). The present article introduces neurosurgical methods in treatment of psychiatric diseases with special consideration of neuromodulation.