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Insanity, madness, lunacy, and craziness are behaviors caused by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity can manifest as violations of societal norms , including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or to other people.
Prairie madness sometimes resulted in the afflicted person moving back East or, in extreme cases, suicide. Prairie madness is not a clinical condition; rather, it is a pervasive subject in writings of fiction and non-fiction from the period to describe a fairly common phenomenon.
General paresis, also known as general paralysis of the insane (GPI), paralytic dementia, or syphilitic paresis is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder, classified as an organic mental disorder, and is caused by late-stage syphilis and the chronic meningoencephalitis and cerebral atrophy that are associated with this late stage of the disease when left untreated.
Risk factors for mental illness include psychological trauma, adverse childhood experiences, genetic predisposition, and personality traits. [7] [8] Correlations between mental disorders and substance use are also found to have a two way relationship, in that substance use can lead to the development of mental disorders and having mental disorders can lead to substance use/abuse.
Referring to people as having a "mental illness" dates from this period in the early 20th century. [49] In the United States, a "mental hygiene" movement, originally defined in the 19th century, gained momentum and aimed to "prevent the disease of insanity" through public health methods and clinics. [72]
Repetition compulsion is the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat a traumatic event or its circumstances. This may take the form of symbolically or literally re-enacting the event, or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to occur again.
Thus, the cause of the phenomenon began at that time to be addressed by the investigation of insanity. [5] During that period in the 19th century, the term hysterical strength could also be found in the intersection of such fields, scientific and religious, for instance appearing in a statement by a physician for the Society for Psychical ...
Georg Feuerstein lists Zen poet Hanshan (fl. 9th century) as having divine madness, explaining that when people would ask him about Zen, he would only laugh hysterically. The Zen master Ikkyu (15th century) used to run around his town with a human skeleton spreading the message of the impermanence of life and the grim certainty of death. [7]