No they weren’t. They were a fringe treatment that was popularized by stigma and prejudice. The fake science and the torturous nature behind them were called out many times by real scientists at the time, and simply ignored by health authorities.

Heck. Just watch how the treatment was portrait in a Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s. There is no way One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would frame lobotomy so badly if it was consider a “golden standard”.

Comparing SSRI to lobotomy is a historic revisionism at best.

Canada is still shocking unconsenting asylum inmates against their family's wishes. A truly barbaric state.