Mental illness in ancient Greece
Treatment
Treatment of mental illness in ancient Greece was a new and experimental process due to the lack of modern-day tools and technology that allow doctors to identify these mental ailments. Some ancient physicians didn't understand what part of the body was responsible for the strange behavior and turned to prayer and forgiveness from the gods. However, most physicians understood mental illness was often caused by physical ailments such as an imbalance of the humors.
Hippocrates was a physician who believed that the brain was the center of thought, intelligence, and emotion.[2] Because of this, he and many others came to the conclusion that mental disorders came from problems with the brain. As time went on and physicians began to better understand mental illness they began to treat patients in different ways. "They were mostly (not entirely) concerned with psychoses (externalizing disorders such as antisocial personality disorder and drug and alcohol use disorders) rather than neuroses (internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety), and they took into account a full range of hard-to-define symptoms including inappropriate behavior in public, delusions, delirium, and hallucinations. Treatments also covered a whole range from physical restraint to counseling; they did not make much use of pharmaceuticals."[3]
Role of religion and superstitions
Treatment of mental illness in ancient times was often linked to religion. Hippocrates[4] was one of the leading faces when battling with mental illness, and it is mentioned in the textbook Religion and Philosophy: Belief and Knowledge in the Classical Age, his strong belief in the gods and the power they hold in being able to heal and help people. Doctors who were trained by Hippocrates were to take an oath that stated, "I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asklepios, Hygieis and Panacia, and I take witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgement, the following oath and agreement.." Many times as a result of people's heavy religious beliefs and lack of knowledge, people who were stricken with madness were believed to be punished by the gods or possessed by demons. There are claims in the Old Testament of possession and madness cast upon people by god, these, in reality, may actually have been cases of mental illnesses that alter behavior such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or dissociative identity disorder. To people who had never encountered these diseases, it would have been difficult to diagnose and identify the disease in a logical way backed by hard evidence because there was likely no evidence to refer to. Due to this lack of evidence and logic, many treatments were designed to help clear the body of any spirits that may have taken over the patient’s body. “Archaeologists have unearthed skulls datable back to at least 5000 BCE which have been trephined or trepanned—small round holes have been bored in them with flint tools. The subject was probably thought to be possessed by devils which the holes would allow to escape.”[5]
Mental illness in society
As in the modern age, there was a
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-0-203-82483-2.[page needed]
- OCLC 54460256– via Google Books.
- ^ Beck, Julie (23 January 2014). "Diagnosing Mental Illness in Ancient Greece and Rome". The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group.
- ISBN 978-90-474-2595-3, retrieved 2020-11-19
- OCLC 48132341.
- S2CID 21769790.
- )
- OCLC 48132341.