Examining how past societies viewed and dealt with mental illness. Prehistoric and Ancient Beliefs Prehistoric cultures often held a supernatural view of abnormal behavior and saw it as the work of evil spirits, demons, gods, or witches who took control of the person. This form of demonic possession was believed to occur when the person[…]
Exploring how the ancient philosophers from Plato to late antiquity understood mental illness. Abstract This article outlines when, how and in what kind of contexts the phenomenon of mental illness was recognized in the ancient philosophical texts, how mental illness was understood in terms of the body–mind interaction, and how mental disorders of the medical[…]
Rosina Bulwer Lytton, from A Blighted Life, 1880 / Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons The life of Rosina Bulwer Lytton provides a fascinating insight into the attitudes towards women and mental health in the 19th century. By Julia Nurse / 09.18.2015 Collections Researcher Wellcome Library Dismissed for years as the mad wife of the novelist and[…]
Walters Art Museum, Creative Commons There is a common perception assumes that demonic possession, witchcraft, and superstition defined mental illness, and religion dominated study of the mind. However, the reality is much more subtle. By Martyn Shuttleworth Historian of Science Beyond Aristotle From the perspective of modern psychology and psychiatry, it is too easy to[…]
If we take off the cloak of reason and instead clothe with that of madness, we may have the chance to penetrate deeper, more occult realms of the spirit, where essential truths may be revealed to us. At least so thought Socrates. There was however one condition: this madness must be of divine origin. By[…]
The theory that education protects against Alzheimer’s disease has been given further weight by new research from the University of Cambridge, funded by the European Union. The study is published today in The BMJ. By Cambridge University / 12.07.2017 Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia. Its chief hallmark is the build of ‘plaques’ and[…]
An illustrated scene at Bedlam from Hogarth’s series of paintings ‘A Rake’s Progress’ / Wikimedia Commons A history of mental illness from the Stone Age to the 20th century. By Dr. Ingrid Farreras Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology Hood College References to mental illness can be found throughout history. The evolution of mental illness,[…]
After his son’s suicide aged 18, Steve Mallen sees the world differently. Along with a growing number of mental health experts, he wants to reduce the rate of suicide across the world, and is aiming for zero. By Simon Usborne / 08.01.2017 Steve Mallen thinks the signs first started to show when his son stopped playing the[…]
Although measures of teen and adult happiness dropped during the high unemployment rates of the Great Recession, it didn’t rebound when the economy started to improve. / ASDF_MEDIA/Shutterstock.com By Dr. Jean Twenge / 01.22.2018 Professor of Psychology San Diego State University We’d all like to be a little happier. The problem is that much of what determines happiness is[…]
Holloway Sanatorium in 1885 / Wellcome Library By Julia Nurse / 08.07.2016 Collections Researcher and Web Content Officer The travel writer Bill Bryson recorded that Virginia Water, the home to Holloway Sanatorium, had a charm about it because “it was full of wandering lunatics”. Bryson worked at the sanatorium in 1973 as a janitor on[…]
William W Sargant, 1948. Wellcome Library reference: PP/WWS/A/19. Mike Jay delves into the personal papers of one of the first ‘media psychiatrists’ of the 20th century. By Mike Jay / 04.02.2014 Author and Cultural Historian In some respects, Sargant was a distinguised establishment figure. He was co-author of ‘An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry’, the[…]
By Lalita Kaplish / 03.02.2016 Wed Editor Wellcome Library George Shuttleworth was a psychiatrist and an asylum superintendent at the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster for 23 years. He was also an important campaigner on education for mental patients. His book, ‘Mentally Deficient Children’ is an argument for the education of children with developmental and[…]
St Lukes Hospital, London: patients case book 1912-1916. Wellcome Library reference: H64/B06/015. What did it mean for a woman to be diagnosed with hysteria? By Charlotte Whittingham / 01.12.2016 Medical Student, Imperial College London Tour Guide and Volunteer Marketing Assistant, Freud Museum London A 1916 casebook from St Luke’s Hospital (then to be found on Old[…]
Symptoms of schizophrenia and related disorders likely arise from a perplexing interplay of social, environmental, psychological, and biological factors. / Apfelshaft123, Flickr, Creative Commons As an increasingly complex picture of schizophrenia emerges, researchers are recognizing that a more individualized and humane approach is needed to better understand and treat the condition. By Michael Balter /[…]
Could understanding canine compulsions help find new treatments for people with obsessive–compulsive disorders too? By Shayla Love / 06.25.2017 Curiously, and perhaps eagerly, I am looking at a bull terrier named Sputnik, searching for a resemblance. He’s a stocky three-year-old, mostly slate grey, with a white stripe on his head and a pink splotch on his[…]
Out of the blue, Vanessa Potter lost her sight. As she recovered, her senses mingled – hearing and touch changed the way she saw colours. Her quest to understand why introduced her to new tech that uses sound to help blind people see. By Vanessa Potter / 10.10.2017 It took just 72 hours for me to lose my[…]
Does living at a higher altitude affect your mental health? VAndreas/shutterstock.com By Dr. Hoehun Ha / 11.05.2017 Assistant Professor of Geography Auburn University at Montgomery Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. In the next 20 years, it’s expected to cause more than 2 million deaths per year worldwide, ranking 14th in the world[…]
A pair of identical twins. The one on the right has OCD, while the one on the left does not. Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine, CC BY-SA By Dr. David Rosenberg, M.D. / 10.19.2017 Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Wayne State University As a psychiatrist, I find that one of the hardest[…]
Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. Detail. Bronze. 160-170s. Rome, Capitoline Museums, Palazzo dei Conservatori. By Dr. Robert S. Colter / 10.09.2017 Associate Lecturer of Philosophy University of Wyoming Depression is on the rise. A study conducted by the World Health Organization found an increase of 20 percent in depression cases within just a decade. I work on[…]
By Toko-pa / 07.18.2017 Learn How Your Sadness can Serve You “My mother slept with an axe under her pillow,” one woman recounts in a plaintive voice, “We lived in terror that my father would return to murder us in the night. For some reason, I don’t know why, but I was always expected to[…]
Stephen Hinshaw explores what it meant to be raised by a father with psychosis—and how that experience has informed his work as a psychologist. By Jill Suttie, Psy.D. / 06.16.2017 What is it like to grow up in a household with a parent displaying serious mental illness? Renowned psychologist Stephen Hinshaw knows firsthand. His father suffered major[…]
By Mark DeNicola / 04.28.2017 I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the middle of the night, and I was alone pacing across the lawn of my dad’s backyard lit by nothing but the moon. I’m not typically an insomniac, but my anxiety had made me into one, and this particular bout with[…]
An electroconvulsive therapy machine is seen at an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London in 2012. REUTERS/Chris Helgren By Dr. Jonathan Sandowsky / 01.12.2017 Theodore J. Castele Professor of Medical History Case Western Reserve University Carrie Fisher’s ashes are in an urn designed to look like a Prozac pill. It’s fitting that in death[…]
By Lori Deschene / 12.07.2016 How You Can Help the People You Love When They Need It Most Sometimes just being there is enough – Unknown It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like someone was holding me by the neck, against a wall, and the floor might drop from beneath us at any moment. I’m[…]
By Dr. Jeanne M. Solzer Professor of Psychology University of Nebraska-Kearney 4:2 (2016) Abstract Over the last 20-30 years, proponents of the medical model have hypothesized that mental illness is the result of a “chemical imbalance” in the brain (i.e., neurological atrophy, Breggin, 2011). In spite of the fact that no scientific evidence exists to[…]
11.22.2016 The Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, is one of the most popular suicide spots in the world, and also the place where one man has spent all his weekends and holidays over the last 13 years trying to convince people out of ending their lives. He has so far been able to save[…]
Our Facebook status updates, ‘likes’ and even photos could help researchers better understand mental health disorders with the right ethical safeguards, argue researchers from the University of Cambridge, who suggest that social networks may even be used in future to provide support and interventions, particularly among young people. 10.28.2016 Over a billion people worldwide use[…]
By Jonathan Davis / 10.20.2016 Supporting Loved Ones Who Are Near the Edge We live in a world where more and more people are medicated for mental health problems every year, yet the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better. There is however, an alternate model to the current system of mental health care which[…]
Modern education systems use very different techniques to those of indigenous cultures. Can we retain information better by using these ancient methods? By Cassandra Sheppard / 10.06.2016 Using Ancient Techniques to Train Modern Brains How much degradation of old people’s minds could be linked to the fact that we isolate them from their old songs,[…]
It’s over a hundred years since the first case of Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed. Since then we’ve learned a great deal about the protein ‘tangles’ and ‘plaques’ that cause the disease. How close are we to having effective treatments – and could we even prevent dementia from occurring in the first place? 09.21.2016 You may have[…]