History of Psychopathology

• Trephination- cutting holes to the skull in the

  belief that evil spirits may come out.
• Hydrotherapy– patients were shocked back to

  their sense by being submerged in ice-cold water.
• The Persecution of Witches- Many of the people accused

  of being witches during the later Middle Ages were

  mentally ill
• Lunacy Trials (Swiss physician Paracelsus attributed

  odd behavior to a misalignment of the moon and

  stars to the term lunacy.) - Beginning in the 13th

  century, lunacy trials were held in England.
• Mass hysteria is characterized by large-scale outbreaks of bizarre behavior; effect of emotional contagion experience of an emotion spreads around us
• In Europe, whole groups of people were simultaneously

  compelled to run out in the streets, dance, shout, rave and

  jump around in patterns as if they were at a particularly

  wild party late at night, (still called a rave), but without the

  music. The behavior was known by several names, including Saint Vitus’s Dance and tarantism
• DEVELOPMENT OF ASYLUMS (15th Century)

  Leprosariums were converted to asylums, refugees for the

  confinement and care of people with mental illness.
• Bethlehem and Other Early Asylums- The Priory of St.

  Mary of Bethlehem, one of the first mental institutions,

  was founded in 1243. It housed six men with mental

  illness.
• In 1547, it was handed over by Henry VIII to the

  City of London. Over the years, this hospital, the word

  bedlam, came to mean a place of confusion or wild uproar. Eventually it became one of London’s great tourist

  attractions.
• Biological Model - Mental disorders had physical causes
• Hippocrates Corpus (450-350 BC)suggested psychological disorders could be treated like any other diseases; saw the brain as the seat of intelligence, consciousness & emotion.
• Benjamin Rush who was considered the Father of

  American Psychiatry, for instance, believed that

  mental disorder was caused by an excess of blood in

  the brain, for which his favored treatment was to

  draw great quantities of blood from disordered

  individuals.
• Early Foundations: Emil Kraepelin Pioneered classification of mental illness based on biological causes
• Emil Kraepelin - published 1st psychiatry text (1883)
• In the late 1920’s & 1930’s, dementia praecox started making its exit, replaced by Eugen Bleuler’s “schizophrenia.”