What is the procedure, ending with “otomy” (the answer is not lobotomy) dealing with the brain of people who are severely emotionally stressed. It does have a part of the brain as part of its name. I need this before Friday 17th.
Go here and take your choice.
First, cpancake, let me welcome you to the SDMB. 
We’re glad you’re here.
As to your question: so far as I know, even severe emotional distress does not lead to any sort of surgery (and -otomy implies cutting) except for, perhaps, a prefrontal lobotomy–which, when they were performed, were pretty much reserved for psychotics. The only thing I can think of along those lines would be a cranial commissurotomy (where the corpus callosum, anterior and posterior commisures are cut in order to stop seizures in severe epileptics; these are the people who have a left brain/right brain disjunction.)
But, to help you out, parts of the brain that might be invovled in emotions: amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, corpus callosum, entorhinal cortex.
The problem is that most of those are in the middle of the brain and performing surgery on them would cause severe damage to other parts of the brain.
LL
This site summarizes psychosurgery and mentions two types of surgeries, the lobotomy and the leucotomy. The former comes in two flavors: the transorbital lobotomy and the prefrontal lobotomy. I’ve also heard of the lobectomy, but I don’t think you’re looking for any of these. They haven’t been used for treatment in decades. Few psychological disorders are treated surgically anymore, for that matter.
Can you give us some more details about this surgery?
By the way, I think that the plural of “otomy” is “otomies.” It is a suffix meaning a surgical incision, as opposed to “otectomy” which is a scraping and not an incision.
For people who are severely depressed (I know you said “stressed”) and for whom other modes of therapy do not work, they perform ECT, which is not an operation. It stand for electric convulsive therapy: shock treatment.
Just for fun, Cecil’s column on the difference between some medical suffixes:
In medicine, what’s the difference between an -ectomy, an -ostomy, and an -otomy?
In part:
I don’t know what kind of surgery this was/is. But this is for my Psychology class Final on Friday night. Our instructor asked “There is a limited form of “otomy” that is performed, on a certain part of the brain, on people who are over emotional or over stressed. What is this limited “otomy”? It has the name of the brain as part of the word.”
I like the answer that LazarusLong42 gave me “Cranial Commissurotomy”. Does anyone know if that is the answer I am looking for?
HELP!!! THANKS, EVERYONE.
no, cranial commissurotomy is done to help severe epileptics by preventing seizure in one half of the brain from bleeding into the other.
maybe DREZotomy? it’s done to people who are in severe pain, usually bedridden, who are suffering from spasms in their limbs. DREZ is short for dorsal root entry zone, the area on which the microsurgical otomy would be done.
doesn’t fit too well, though. Are you sure it’s “otomy”?
Prefrontal lobotomy, or frontal lobotomy. Referring to cutting into the frontal lobe. Even if it isn’t common anymore, it once was for a purpose similar to what you stated in the OP.
Than to have to have a frontal lobotomy… 
An “otomy” refers to a created opening.
An “ectomy” refers to the removal of something.
A lobotomy is a surgical procedure that creates an opening into the brain.
A frontal lobectomy can refer to removing a portion of the frontal lobe of the brain, usually done in the case of severely psychotic individuals, and pretty uncommon now with the advent of improved psych medications
There was a rather barbaric type of lobotomy done before modern surgical techniques were perfected that involved basically inserting a sort of ice pick behind the eyeball and “stirring the brains around” It produced severe damage to the frontal lobe of the brain and was the crude equivilent of a lobectomy. Its major advantage was that no cutting of the skull was required.
The phrase for which you are searching might be leukotomy or perhaps <modifier adjective> leukotomy. They don’t do lobotomies any more, prefrontal or otherwise.
The modifier adjectives pertain to the approach. Transorbital is one possibility.
The results of most leukotomies is a significant drop in basic processing (such as is measured by IQ) and, anecdotally, a much more significant drop in the connection between feeling and thought. Victims of the procedure are generally lacking in maturity and depth and are often described as happy, frenetic, distracted, shallow, trivial, inattentive, or vapid.
The procedure often involves slow probing followed by electrical cauterization of the targeted neural tissues.