History of Mental Illness?
Question by Go Herd: History of mental illness?
I’m writing a paper on the history of mental illness and how it has come to be accepted in society today. I’ve looked all night for sources through my university’s library website but all that I can come up with are abstracts and “unavailable” documents. Does anyone know where I can go to find reliable research sources?
Thanks in advance!
Best answer:
Answer by simple !!! but cute
Our earliest explanation of what we now refer to as psychopathology involved the possession by evil spirits and demons. Many believed, even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the bizarre behavior associated with mental illness could only be an act of the devil himself. To remedy this, many individuals suffering from mental illness were tortured in an attempt to drive out the demon. Most people know of the witch trials where many women were brutally murdered due to a false belief of possession. When the torturous methods failed to return the person to sanity, they were typically deemed eternally possessed and were executed.
1600s
Native American shamans, or medicine men, summoned supernatural powers to treat the mentally ill, incorporating rituals of atonement and purification.
1692
Witchcraft and demonic possession were common explanations for mental illness. The Salem witchcraft trials sentenced nineteen people to hanging.
1724
Puritan clergyman, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), broke with superstition by advancing physical explanations for mental illnesses.
1812
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) became one of the earliest advocates of humane treatment for the mentally ill with the publication of Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook of psychiatry.
1843
There were approximately 24 hospitals–totaling only 2,561 beds–available for treating mental illness in the United States.
1908
Manic depressive Clifford Beers (1876-1943) wrote The Mind That Found Itself, an account of his experience as a mental patient which vividly describes the cruelty that was the norm of institutional care. Beers went on to found the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, predecessor to today’s National Mental Health Association.
1909
Sigmund Freud visited America and lectured on psychoanalysis at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
1910
Emil Kraepelin first describes Alzheimer’s Disease.
1918
The American Psychoanalytic Association ruled that only individuals who have completed medical school and a psychiatric residency can become candidates for psychoanalytic training.
1920
Harry Stack Sullivan’s ward for schizophrenic patients at Sheppard-Pratt Hospital demonstrates the impact of a therapeutic milieu when patients are able to be returned to the community.
1930s
Psychiatrists began to inject insulin to induce shock and temporary coma as a treatment for schizophrenia.
1936
Egas Moniz published an account of the first human frontal lobotomy. Between 1936 and the mid-1950s, an estimated twenty thousand of these surgical procedures were performed on American mental patients.
1940s
Electrotherapy (applying electric current to the brain) was first used in American hospitals to treat mental illnesses.
1947
Fountain House in NYC begins psychiatric rehabilitation for mentally ill persons.
1952
The first conventional antipsychotic drug, chlorpromazine, was introduced to treat patients with schizophrenia and other major mental disorders.
1960s
Conventional antipsychotic drugs, such as haloperidol, were first used to control outward (“positive”) symptoms of psychosis, bringing a significant measure of calm and order to previously noisy and chaotic psychiatric wards.
Lithium revolutionized the treatment of manic depression.
1962
422,000 individuals were hospitalized for psychiatric care in the United States.
1970
Mass deinstitutionalization began. Patients and their families were left to their own resources due to lack of outpatient programs for rehabilitation and reintegration back into society.
1980
Rise of managed care–short-stay hospitalization with community treatment became the standard of care for mental illness.
Carol Anderson and Gerald Hogarty publish treatment model of family psychoeducation in schizophrenia – reduces relapse by over 50%.
1989
The first serotonin dopamine antagonist was introduced for patients with treatment resistant/intolerant schizophrenia.
1990
Brain imaging is used to learn more about the development of major mental illnesses.
1994
The 1st first-line of the atypical antipsychotic drugs, is introduced. It is the 1st new first-line antipsychotic drug in almost 20 years.
1997
Researchers identify genetic links to polar disorder, suggesting that the disease is inherited.
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