A Brief History of the Treatment of Mental Illness: What it Means to Me
I. Introduction The only thing worse than an undiagnosed case of any form of mental illness is being turned away after a diagnosis. My brother, Timothy Charles Hobson Jr. had attempted suicide several times throughout his life. On his birthday, August 16, 2014 he decided to try once more. Although, he wasn’t successful on that day, his body could no longer take the pressures he intentionally put on it and he succumbed to his attempts on August 19, 2014. The day before his birthday, his last post on Facebook was: “If you had to stay up all night to talk someone you loved out of committing suicide, would you?” (Hobson, 2014) Unfortunately, I did not see that post until after he had decided to end his life. While retrieving the things he wanted
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II. History
A. Neolithic Period Archeological digs within the Babylonian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian territories have unearthed trephined skulls. These artifacts serve as proof that mental illness and the treatment thereof dated back to 5000 BCE (Foerschner, 2010; Porter 10). During the Neolithic period, the cultural consensus was that mental illness was a spiritual affliction caused by demons, sorcery, an angry deity, or a curse. Trepanation, also called trephining is a practice started in the Neolithic period as a surgical exorcism of demonic spirits. Healers performed the procedure by chipping a hole into the cranium using a stone tool. Throughout the centuries, as the instruments used to perform craniotomies have evolved, so has clinician’s understanding of mental illness and its reason to perform one. Figure 1: Ancient trephined skull. Berkeley Foundation. United Kingdom
Figure 2: A depiction of trepanning from the painting Cutting the Stone (circa 1494) by Hieronymus
Leupo, Kimberly. "The History of Mental Illness." The History of Mental Illness. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Culture is a collection of religion, traditions, and beliefs that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture is created and maintained through the repetition of stories and behavior. It is never definite because it is continuously being modified to match current trends, however, historical principles are still relevant. With respect to mental illness, culture is crucial to how people choose to deal with society and the methods used to diagnose and cope with mental illnesses. In Watters’
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), it defines mental illness as Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in thinking, emotion or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. (What Is Mental Illness? (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness). Mental Disorders are a wide range of mental conditions that affect mood, thinking, and behavior. There are a lot of different psychological disorders here is a list of the major psychological disorders and their definitions:
Up to the 1600s, people with psychotic disorders were sent off in "ships of fools", locked in cages, "flogged into reason", or killed. The care for the insane at this time was the responsibility of nuns and monks (Noll, xviii).
The treatment of the mentally ill started back in the far past. In 400 BC, Hippocrates, who was a Greek physician, treated mental illness as diseases of disturbed physiology, and not displeasure of the Gods or demonic possession ("Timeline: Treatments for," ). Greek medical writers found treatments such as quiet, occupation, and the use of a drug called purgative hellebore ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). During these times, family members took care of the mentally ill ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). In the middle Ages, the Europeans let the mentally ill have their freedom, as long as they were not dangerous ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). The mentally ill were also seen as witches who were possessed by demons ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). In 1407, the first mental illness establishment was made in Valencia, Spain ("Timeline: Treatments for,”).
There are documents written by “healers, philosophers, and writers throughout the ages point to the long-standing existence of depression as a health problem, and the continuous and sometimes ingenious struggles people have made to find effective ways to treat this illness.”.. said (RASHMI NEMADE, 2007). Depression was once called “melancholia.” It was in ancient Mesopotamian texts in the second millennium B.C. This place was “an ancient region in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today’s Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey.” (Mark, 2009) Anyway, mental illnesses at that time were attributed to being possessed by demons (which I find sadly kind of accurate.) Apparently, the “first historical understanding of depression was thus that depression was a spiritual (or mental) illness rather than a physical one.” (RASHMI NEMADE, 2007) Long story short, throughout time ancient Greek and Roman literature had plenty of demonic references in regards to mental illnesses. “In the 5th century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a king who was driven mad by evil spirits.” (RASHMI NEMADE, 2007) Chinese, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilizations all decided on demonic possession but used exorcism techniques such as beatings, restraint, and
Mental health: we can all peer into the looking glass and be reflective on a time that our mental health was not in an optimal state. However, in society, even today, there is still quite a stigma in regards to what mental health is and how to treat it. These theories and opinions ebb and flow and often when you account for the zeitgeist of a particular era, the attitudes and beliefs that are prominent are quite logical in terms of explanatory power. In the mid 1800’s to the early 1930’s, the Freudian psychodynamic theory of mental health was favoured; this involved a more qualitative approach, and many of Freud’s theories revolved around case studies in which his patients were experiencing hysteria or conflict in the conscious and subconscious mind. Freud believed that talking therapy could uncover the subconscious and could resolve any mental dissonance that was
The history of neuropsychology dates incredibly far back with some of the first written records dating back to the 1700 B.C and archaeological evidence pointing to perhaps even before that. The artefacts collected by archaeologists in Peru show human skulls with cuts and hole in then, presumably created through a process called Trephanation. This entailed cutting, drilling and carving holes into the skull as part of a surgical treatment to an ailment or sometimes on religious grounds as a way of releasing evil spirits. In Ancient Greece both Aristotle and Socrates formulated theories regarding the mind but it was Hippocrates who was one of the first to correctly infer that the brain was the seat of all intelligence and behind controlling all senses and movement, as well as correctly identifying contralateral control in the brain. Descartes was credited with the development of the concept of mind – body dualism. This philosophy suggested that there was a complete split betwee...
Mental Illness was important to Ancient Egyptians, because they thought that all diseases or illness made a person unhappy, so if they tried to cure ( at least help them) it, that person can be happy and go to the afterlife ( in order to get to the afterlife you need to be free of diseases), and whoever helped the person be cured would be greatly rewarded by “OSIRIS” (god of the afterlife) especially those who helped the mentally ill.
Throughout history, explanations for mental illness have been described as supernatural, psychological, and biological. Prior to the early Greek physicians, the supernatural model of mental illness prevailed. Early humans did not have science to explain natural events so magic, mysticism, and superstition were used as a substitution. They believed in animism, the idea that all of nature is alive, and anthropomorphism, the tendency to project human features onto nature. Reification was also a popular belief that assumed if you can think of something, it exists. Sympathetic magic was the idea that one can heal and individual by influencing an object that is similar or closely associated to them (Frazer, 1890/1963). Primitive healers would often imitate the patient's ailments and then model the recovery. Reification also lead to the bel...
Depicted in films around the world mental illness is often mistaken for possession by the unworldly. The Bible has demonstrated the existence of mental illness and demonic possessions bordering the same plane for centuries. Mark 6:13, “And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.”. It is only until recent years that with the help of psychiatric doctors the Catholic church has adjusted their procedures when distinguishing the difference between demonic possession and mental illness.
Suicide is like a natural disaster; an earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, a meteorite. Abrupt, jolting, devastating the lives of all those it impacts. It’s a life changing catastrophic crevice that rips apart the lives of the survivors who are left behind to navigate the grief left behind by the loss of their loved one. These loved ones spend years working through the reverberations; the anger, the guilt, confusion and regret. They search and search for the answer to the endless questions…. Why? What if? If only… I know this. I’ve been there.
The early Babylonian, Chinese and Egyptian population also thought of depression as being a demonic possession and exorcism techniques to heal the illness. They used techniques such as beatings and starvation. A Greek physician, named Hippocrates thought that personality traits and mental illnesses were attributed to a balance or imbalance of body fluids named humors. The four humors were yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. Hippocrates divides mental illnesses into different components: mania, melancholia(depression), and phrenitis (brain fever). Moving on many years forward, during the renaissance in Italy in the 14th through the 17th century mental illness was apparent. Witch hunts and killings of the mentally ill were popular in Europe. Some doctors at this time adopted Hippocrates theory and thought mental illnesses were due to natural causes and they thought witches were not mentally correct and were people in need of humane
Progress in understanding abnormal behavior over the centuries has not been easy. The steps have been unsettling , with great gaps in between.. The dominant social, economic, and religious views of the times have had a big influence over how people view abnormal behavior. In the ancient world, superstitions were followed by the emergence of medical concepts in places such as Egypt and Greece; many of these concepts were developed and refined by Roman physicians. With the fall of Rome near the end of the fifth century (AD), superstitious views dominated popular thinking about mental disorders in Europe for more than a thousand years. The more scientific aspects of Greek medicine survived only in the Islamic counties of the Middle East. As late as the 15th and 16th centuries it was still believed, even by scholars, that some mentally disturbed people were possessed by a devil, and the primary treatment for demonic possession was for an exorcism to be