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In English, the word "sane" derives from the Latin adjective sanus, meaning "healthy". Juvenal's phrase mens sana in corpore sano is often translated to mean a "healthy mind in a healthy body". From this perspective, insanity can be considered as poor health of the mind, not necessarily of the brain as an organ (although that can affect mental ...
The English suffix-mania denotes an obsession with something; a mania.The suffix is used in some medical terms denoting mental disorders.It has also entered standard English and is affixed to many different words to denote enthusiasm or obsession with that subject.
In the United States, a psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health professional is often consulted as an expert witness in insanity cases, but the ultimate legal judgment of the defendant's sanity is determined by a jury, not by a mental health professional. In other words, mental health professionals provide testimony and professional ...
The idea of insanity in English law dates from 1324, when the Statute de Praerogativa Regis allowed the King to take the lands of "idiots and lunatics." The early law used various words, including "idiot", "fool" and "sot" to refer to those who had been insane since birth, [2] and "lunatic" for those who had later become insane, or were insane with some lucid intervals. [3]
The term "crazy" (from Middle English meaning cracked) and insane (from Latin insanus meaning unhealthy) came to mean mental disorder in this period. The term "lunacy", long used to refer to periodic disturbance or epilepsy, came to be synonymous with insanity. "Madness", long in use in root form since at least the early centuries AD, and ...
An adaptation of the Old English word atter meaning "poison", and closely related to the word adder for the venomous crossed viper. Lexicographers William and Mary Morris in Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1977) favour this derivation because "mad as a hatter" was known before hat making was a recognized trade. [ 1 ]
[1] [2] The word arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. [3] It originally referred to people of the second order in a former and discarded classification of intellectual disability, with a mental age of three to seven years and an IQ of 25–50, above " idiot " (IQ below 25) and below " moron " (IQ of 51–70). [ 4 ]
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital . Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from and eventually replaced the older lunatic asylum.