Introduction to Mental Health History


For generations people experiencing Mental Health have had to put up with the stigma of being called 'nuts', 'crazy', 'wacko', 'stupid', 'barmey'. Others who have never experienced Mental Health may also think

'Mentally ill people are morally bad'
'Mentally ill people are dangerous and should be locked in an asylum forever'
'Mentally ill people need somebody to take care of them'

How often have you heard comments like these or seen these types of portrayals in movies, television shows or books? you may even be guilty of making these comments yourself. Is there any truth behind these portrayals, or is that negative view based on ignorance and fear?

Mental Health is the term used to describe the health relating to the mind. When the term Mental Health is used the first reaction people have is a negative one. The truth is that there is a stigma attached to the word Mental Health because of the lack of understanding and misconceptions people have about it.

Mental Health as a term is neither positive nor negative as people are mentally well or ill. The relevant element in mental illness is the nature and degree of the mental health disorder which someone is suffering.

The problem with misunderstanding mental ill health is not a new phenomenem and there have been extensive research into the litrature of Ancient Rome and Greece where it was found that there were desciptions of melancholy, hysteria and phobia.

As is still the case today different cultures had contrasting views of mental illness and took varying approaches. In the tenth century Arab physician Rhazes ran a psychiatric ward in a Baghdad hospital and wrote two texts, El-Mansuri and Al-Hawi, which gave the first definitions, symtoms and treatments for mental illnesses. Unfortunately the European culture, during the middle ages, was unable to embrace these developments as they were intrenched in the belief that mental illness was witchcraft, spritual or demonic possession. Europe eventually encorporated the idea of mental health when the Islamic Medical texts were translated into Latin and scholars such as Sigmund Freud, Philippe Pinel and Alois Alzheimer further developed these principals during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentyeth centuries.

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