Historical Perspectives Flashcards
What was the first evidence for a biological cause of mental illness?
In 1885 there was an increase in the number of the insane and during the same period syphilis was reaching epidemic proportions and 2 physicians thought that the two might be related
- Knowing that you could only be infected with syphilis once, they started injecting these patients with pus taken from the sores of people with active syphilis
- They found that none of their test subjects developed the symptoms of syphilis and concluded that “general paralysis of the insane” arose from a previous infection of syphilis
Has mental illness always been around?
Yes. Mental illness has been around for all of recorded history but it was not well understood
There was no differentiation between psychosis, developmental disability, depression, etc.
These were all collectively thought of as “defects” and they were typically thought to be supernatural in origin (i.e., evil spirits, demon possession, punishment for sin)
What did early treatments for mental illness include?
Early treatments included exorcism and trepanation
* It has really only been in the last ~200 years that mental illness has been thought of as an Illness instead of a spiritual and moral problem…
What happened in the early to mid 19th century for schizophrenia?
Origins of what we now know as schizophrenia
-European psychiatrists began describing disorders of unknown causes, typically affecting the young, and often progressing to chronic deterioration
Many different names including:
- adolescent insanity
- catatonic syndrome
- Hebephrenia
However, in all of these cases the origin of the condition was not well defined…
What did Emil Kraepelin do that helped distinguish between mental disorders?
In 1887 Kraepelin merges all of the different descriptions of these disorders and engages in the very first longitudinal study of patients experiencing them
- He is the first to classify 2 broad classes of psychotic disorders, which you know has been referred to as the “Kraepelinian Dichotomy”
- Dementia Praecox (what we eventually call schizophrenia)
- Manic Depression (what we eventually call bipolar disorder)
What does dementia praecox mean?
Dementia Praecox literally means “early dementia”. He believed that dementia praecox was primarily a disease of the brain
Did Kraepelin ever experience doubts about the Kraepelinian Dichotomy?
Towards the end of his career Kraepelin experienced doubts about the validity of his original formulation of the nosology of psychoses and, in a seminal paper published in 1920, he conceded that “we cannot distinguish satisfactorily between these two illnesses and this brings home the suspicion that our formulation of the problem may be incorrect.”
- He considered abandoning the categorical disease notions of dementia praecox and manic-depressive disorder, and replacing them with a sort of dimensional model in which schizophrenic and affective syndromes “the affective and schizophrenic forms of mental disorder do not represent the expression of particular pathological processes, but rather indicate the areas of our personality in which these processes unfold.
Why is Eugen Bleuler important?
