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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 ]
During most of the 20th century, mental illness was ascribable to problematic relationships between children and their parents. This view was held well into the late 1990s, in which people still believed this child-parent relationship was a large determinant of severe mental illness, such as depression and schizophrenia.
Sociological studies of the early 20th century can be regarded as predecessors of today's psychiatric epidemiology. [1]: 6 These studies investigated for instance how suicide rates differ between Protestant and Catholic countries or how the risk of having schizophrenia is increased in neighborhood characterized with high levels of social isolation.
Some of the early manuals about mental disorders were created by the Greeks. [6] In the 4th century BCE, Hippocrates theorized that physiological abnormalities may be the root of mental disorders. [5] In 4th- to 5th-century BCE Greece, Hippocrates wrote that he visited Democritus and found him in his garden cutting open animals. Democritus ...
Since the middle of the 20th century, the problem of institutionalization has been one of the motivating factors for the increasing popularity of deinstitutionalization and the growth of community mental health services, [2] [11] since some mental healthcare providers believe that institutional care may create as many problems as it solves.
In England, for example, only 14 of the 130 psychiatric institutions that had been created in the early 20th century remained open at the start of the 21st century. [10] In 1963, President John F. Kennedy launched the community health movement in the United States as a "bold new approach" to mental health care, aimed at coordinating mental ...
On the "feeble-minded" side of the Kallikak family, descended from the abandoned single-parent barmaid, the children wound up poor, mentally ill, delinquent, and intellectually disabled. Deborah was, in Goddard's assessment, "feeble-minded": a catch-all early 20th century term to describe various forms of intellectual or learning disabilities.
In the 19th century, one could have ones head examined, literally, using phrenology, the study of the shape of the skull developed by respected anatomist Franz Joseph Gall. Other popular treatments included physiognomy —the study of the shape of the face—and mesmerism , developed by Franz Anton Mesmer —designed to relieve psychological ...