History of mental illness

How was mental illness viewed and treated in ancient times?

• supernatural or spiritual explanations 

• Treated through the church, religious individuals, prayers, chants, exorcists, burned at the stake

Trephination

• An individual gets a hole drilled through their skull to release the demons, spirits that caused their  behaviour

• If they survived they were cured 

Ancient Egypt

-recommend recreational activities to improve mood and stress

-singing, dancing, drawing, painting, creative 

Ancient Greece

-hippocrates moved away from supernatural explanations 

-created hysteria which is caused by a wandering womb 

-womb would interfere with other organs and caused symptoms 

-thorat= lose her voice, ribcage= shortness of breath 

-unpleasants and pleasant scents would be placed her the woman's vagina to help the uterus to its original spot

-gential massage

Humor Theory

-good health relies on a balance of the 4 fundamental humors

-when one humor is too strong or weak, illness will happen 

humors

Blood: Heart: being optimistic, cheerful, energic, courageous, outgoing, carefree 

Phlegm: Brain: calm, careful, thoughtful, patient, reliable, even tempered 

Yellow bile: liver: anger, irritability, being impulsive, restless, aggressive, hot-tempered

Black bile: spleen: sadness, withdrawn, anxious, quite, pessimistic, 

Treatments to restore humoral balance

1. Purging 

1. Emetics- substances that cause you to vomit 

2. Laxatives 

2. Diet 

-what to eat and avoid to avoid balance

-wanted to eat foods with opposite benefits to that humour

-excessive blood, avoid warm foods and eat foods that are cooling like a cucumber 

-excessive phlegm, eat foods that are hot and warm, spicy foods 

3. Bloodletting 

-remove blood in order to get rid of bad blood 

1. Phlembotomy; drain blood 

2. Hirudotherapy: applying leeches to improve circulation 

3. Hijamh: wet cupping, small incision is made 

The birth of the asylum 

-prior to asylums who would care for the mad?

-homeless, beggars, locked up by family, abused and restrained by family

-What was the initial purpose of asylums?

 Place to house them, take burdens off families, contain them, protect society, prevent disturbance from occurring, very easy to get in very hard to get out, intermediate sentence 

-Bethlam royal hospital, bedlem opened in 1547

-holding centres, no sunlight, small cells, chained up, no sanitation, people watched as a form of entertainment 

-people that worked there were not trained 

Common treatments

Hydrotherapy: water would calm the system 

Spinning chair/gyrating chair : person in chair gets spinned very fast, rebalance brain and nervous system

Transqualizing chair: straight jacket with a box over head, done to calm mind

Confinement crib: confident to prevent movement and harming themselves, rebalance the mind