Abnormal Psychology / Mental Illness History and Treatment

Most historians believe that prehistoric societies regarding abnormal behavior as the work of evil spirits. These early societies apparently explained all phenomena as resulting from the actions of magical, something sinister being who controlled the world. In particular they viewed a human body and mind as a battle ground between external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behavior was seen as a victory by evil spirits. The cure for this conquer, was to force the demon from the victim’s body.

It reported that this supernatural view began as far back as the Stone Age, a half-million years ago. Skulls from the error have been discovered in Europe and South America, which showed evidence of an operation called trephination. A trephination was an ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used to cut away a circular section of the skull. The procedure was performed on those who expressed severe abnormal behavior such as; hallucinations and melancholia. The purpose for opening the skull was to release evil spirits that were thought to be causing the behavior.

Later societies clearly attributed abnormal behavior to the possession of demons. The writings of the Egyptians, Chinese and Hebrew all expressed psychological deviance this way. The Bible for example, describes how an evil spirit from the Lord affected King Saul and how David feigned madness in order to convince his enemies that he was visited by deviant forces.

The treatment for abnormal behavior in these early societies was often exorcism. The idea was to coax the demon or evil spirit to leave a person’s body. A shaman or priest preformed these sessions by reciting prayer, pleading with the evil spirit, insulting them, perform magic, make loud noises, or have the possessed drink bitter poison. If this failed, the shaman would proceed with a more extreme form of exorcism, which included whipping or starving the person.

In the years from roughly 500B.C. to 500A.D. the flourishing Greek and Roman civilization, philosophers and physicians identified a number of mental disorder. Such disorders include; melancholia, mania, dementia, hysteria, delusion, and hallucinations. Demonology interpretations were still wide spread and being practiced, but philosophers and physicians began offering alternative explanations. One infamies Hippocrates, taught and believed, that imbalances of the four humors “four fluids” affected the personality. For example; an excess of yellow bile caused mania and drives a husband to beat his wife. An excess of Black bile underlined melancholia and could be cured by celibacy, a vegetable diet, and exercise.

A growing destruction of science spread throughout Europe. From A.D, 500 to 1350, the period know as the Middle Ages or even “the dark ages” , the power of the clergy greatly increased. Their beliefs, highly spiritual and demonological, dominated all aspects of life. Once again abnormal behavior was a conflict of good and evil, God and the devil.

The dark ages received is name from the desolate conditions, war, urban uprising and plague were concurring the lives of many. During this time of stress, anxiety, and the struggle for survival, there were outbreaks of mass madness , in which large numbers of people shared delusions and hallucinations. Once example, is the disorder tarantism, in which groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go into convulsion. Some of those who thought they had tarantism, would parade around oddly dressed, others would tear off their clothes and parade around in nothing at all. All of those who thought they were suffering from this disorder, apparently believed to have been bitten and poisoned by a wolf spider, now called a tarantula. Another example of mass madness was lycanthropy, in which people believed to be possessed by wolves and other animals. In these cases, people would crawl around on all fours, howling and growling. They acted uncomfortable and itchy as if hair was begging to grow from all places

on their body. Stories of lycanthropy, more popularly known as werewolves , have been passed down generations and today have become the images of writers and moviemakers.

Exorcism again became popular preformed by clergy men. If traditional exorcism techniques did not work, they appointed others to perform indistinguishable forms of torture. Toward the midst of the Middle Ages hospitals developed in city regions and medical views of abnormality gained favor once again. When the lunacy trials were held in late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as, a blow to the head or fear of one’s father, to be held responsible for an individual’s unusual behavior.

The Renaissance, a period of flourished with culture and scientific activity, 1400-1700 demonology views continued to decline. The German physician, Johann Weyer, was the first physician to specialize in mental illness; he believed the mind was susceptible to sickness as the body.

The care of people with mental illness continued to improve. In England, the mentally ill were able to stay home while their families were aided financially by the local parish.

Across Europe, religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders. The best known shrine, was actually established centuries earlier at Gheel in Belgium. In the  beginning in the fifteenth century, people came from all over the world to received psychic healing here. Gheel was the forerunner of today’s community mental health programs and it continues to demonstrate that people with psychological disorders can respond to loving care and treatment. Today patients are still welcome to live in foster homes in the town, interacting with other residents, until they recover.

Unfortunately, the improvements began to fade. Residents could only house few at a time and medical hospitals themselves were too few and far between. By the mid-sixteenth century monasteries and hospitals were being converted into asylums, institutions with the primary purpose of housing and treating large quantities of the mentally ill. The asylums shortly began to overflow and became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated and treated with massive amounts of cruelty.

The first asylum Bethlehem Hospital was founded in the early fifteenth century in Muslim Spain, it was given to the city of London by Henry VIII for the sole purpose of confining the mentally ill. In this asylum, patients were bound in chains and cried out for all to hear. During certain phases of the moon, they would be lined up and whipped in order to prevent violence. The hospital even became a popular tourist attraction. People were eager to pay to look at the howling and gibbering imamates. The name, pronounced “Bedlam” by locals, has come to mean chaotic uproar. Similarly in the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna, patients were herded into a narrow hallway by the outer walls so that the tourist outside could look up and see them. In La Bic^etre in Paris, patents where shackled to the walls of cold, dark, dirty cells with iron collars and given spoiled food that could be sold nowhere else. Such asylums remained a popular form of care until the late 1700’s.

Some of the forms of treatment that were used in these asylums were;

Shock treatment

however, this was a different form of therapy that what is currently done on rare cases today. During the sixteenth century electricity had not yet been invented. A water shock treatment was preformed, and another version of it appears in the drawing, where an individual is left blind-folded on the platform, suddenly the platform falls from beneath and the patient is dumped into a bucket of ice cold water, creating an effect of body shock.

The device seen in the drawing is called an ovary compressor. I'll can only leave it’s torture to the imagination.

The Crib

Outrageous devices and technique such as “the crib” were used in asylums. Seclusion in its worst form, a person was completely strapped in the crib, unable to move. This, however, was not the worst form of restraint. It took a leading psychiatrist to develop that.

The Rush Chair

Or Restraining Chair was also used to limit motion and reduce sensory stimulation by covering the head and blocking vision.

Rotating Chair

Another device used to induce a state of shock. A person could last only a short time (seconds) in this chair without becoming nauseous and losing consciousness.

 The Ninteenth Century through Today on Part II of Abnormal Behavior/Mental Illness Views and Treatment.