History of Psychiatry
The history of psychiatry begins with the Ancient Greek philosophy that mental health was largely attached to physical health. Today, we know that one has very little to do with the other.
If psychiatry had continued on the path that the Ancient Greeks laid out, those people within our society that are considered mentally ill would be tortured and exorcised until they were “normal.” To those Greeks, people that were mentally unstable were also possessed by the devil, which caused Greek priests to perform various acts of cruelty upon patients. As soon as this Greek philosophy was proven to be entirely false, the history of psychiatry took a turn for the better.
Throughout the medieval Islamic world, psychiatric hospitals were erected in order to cure the sick with various types of clinical observations. Traces of these hospitals can be seen today within various forms of therapy including art therapy, music therapy, occupational therapy, and therapy through medication. One of the very first psychiatrists (though he would not have been known as this type of doctor) was the Persian Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi. Razi took various psychological methods and combined them with physiological results in order to properly treat the ill. One of his contemporaries, Najab ud-din Muhammad, was the first to separate various mental illnesses into categories such as agitated depression, neurosis, priapism, sexual impotence, psychosis, and mania.
Drawing largely upon Islamic methods, Carl Jung later developed the word association test that was an enormous breakthrough within the field of psychiatry. The history of psychiatry took an interesting turn during the “anti-psychiatry” period when the Germans believed that various psychiatric conditions were the mere result of a lack of social control. Most psychiatric hospitals within Germany were closed down during this time, and patients were no longer subjected to various treatments (such as electroshock).
During the 1960s, former President John F. Kennedy erected the National Institute of Mental Health within the United States, and many mental health centers were opened. From that point on, most homes for the mentally ill were carefully controlled and monitored. However, there are still some reports of abuse within these homes today.
The history of psychiatry is vast and intriguing, though most would agree that this trade is far more humane today than it ever was before. From the Greeks to the Americans, psychiatry still has a long way to go until mental illness is completely understood.