Psychological Disorder History

History of Psychological Disorders
In today’s society psychological disorders are common and in most cases able to be treated through ether medicine or therapy, however this was not always the case. Psychological disorders were first attempted to be cured as early as the 5,000 B.C.E. In these earliest days of treatment there was very little understanding of what caused them. Therefore the people went with what was heard for explanation. The most widely believed explanation was that the person had been possessed by a demon. This led to often painful and unhelpful attempts at curing the person. Proper ways of care for those afflicted with psychological disorders has evolved with time and will continue to as more knowledge of the brain is discovered.

This led to those with these psychological disorders developing a social stigma behind them. Those without these disorders began believing that “a mentally ill member implies a hereditary, disabling condition in the bloodline threatening the family’s identity as an honorable unit” (Stanley). Those affected with disorders sadly were forced to end up living two ways: alone on the streets or in confinement. Along with any the public ended up seeing as unmanageable or possibly dangerous being thrown in jails or other locations out of the public eye. Due to such misunderstanding of this group of people the development of places to put them started in the 15th century. “Placing the mentally ill in facilities allowed members of the general public to ignore the problem. They didn’t see anyone who had a mental illness roaming the streets, and if they placed a person in an institution like this, they may not have come back to visit.” (Mental Health Treatment). In most cases those placed in the institutions were left with no visits from the outside. The conditions in which they had to live were unfavorable, and often they were meant with unspeakable cruelty. Patients of these institutions were chained to their beds, kept in filthy conditions and even abused. Those dealing with the challenging mental problem were subjected to hair pulling or even solitary. After this method of just hiding them away and

In time their hope was to develop some form of chemical restraint. They felt this would allow those with illness to function within the normal society, getting rid of the need for institutionalization. This ended up being largely successful and found medications like lithium helped with severe cases of bipolar disorders, while antipsychotics medication soothed cases of schizophrenia. However, the amount of people hospitalized due to mental illnesses skyrocketed. It had became a global problem that caused experts to wonder if the mentally ill could ever be taken from institution and provided with medication they could use at