As any other aspect of our life, mental health is a complicated subject. With more and more people feeling free to talk about their mental health problems or even just the struggle for mental clarity, there has been a ton of research on this topic in the last few decades. There are a lot of aspects to mental well-being. And it may feel like it’s only our generation or the generation before, that struggles with mental health problems. But really, is it so? Are we the unfortunate few throughout human history to have such problems? Or is there something more to it? Okay, let’s get started.
I am no psychology major. I am going to talk about this as someone who has been in depression for a period of time and has come out from it. This will be a series of posts talking about Mental health. The preconceived notions about it in the past, the things that we deal with when going through depression, and the stuff that we need to do to get out of it. Any opinion on any of these posts is highly welcome as I want to engage more with people on this subject. But first of all, let’s explore why is mental health such a big deal now?
To be honest, I think mental health has always been a big issue that mankind has had to deal with throughout history. It’s just that we are talking about it more these days, and thereby more and more focus is going on the mental well-being of all of us. Back in the day, the distribution of wealth, power and/or any resource was skewed in favor of a certain section of society. The people on the wrong end of the spectrum didn’t really have a say for the most part of our history and therefore we rarely hear about the issue of mental health arising in history. (Or even if we do, we hear those stories in the form of satanic acts or those people as demonic or queer sections of society rather than as people having real, diagnosable problems.)
Don’t get me wrong, the money and power is still concentrated in the top 1% or the top 10% today, but compared to the 1000s, 1200s or even the 1700s, our situation is way better. With Industrial revolution and rise of the middle class, there are some parallels that can be drawn today between different sections of the society, or even among people of different countries. Globalization has turned the world into more of a fluid system consisting of human beings as basic blocks of organization, rather than the stagnant and confined system of nationals belonging to a certain country and only getting exposure to their surroundings or their country. We saw one of the flip sides of globalization with the spread of the Corona virus, but this is not to say that Globalization hasn’t had its fair share of advantages.
And one of the advantages of this has been the focus on mental health in different parts of the world. For example, even 10-15 years ago, mental health in India was a taboo. People thought of any mental/ psychological problems as going mad. It wasn’t a part of any normal conversation and the patients had to suffer through these important problems in their lives on their own without any shred of external support(talking about the general public here, not the rich or the famous). But these days, people in general are more accepting. Most parents now understand that mental well-being is also very important for a child’s overall development. Now, I’m not saying that there’s understanding across all sections in India. There’s still a lot of stigma attached to people with mental health issues in most parts of the country, but it’s safe to say that the situation has improved drastically. And without globalization, the exposure to the developed societies and interacting with different types of people through the World Wide Web, it would have not been possible.
Another aspect of talking about the evolution of mental health, is the treatment of mental health patients in the past. Let’s read an excerpt from NOBAPROJECT about the mental health patients of the past.
In the past, uncommon behavior or behavior that deviated from the sociocultural norms and expectations of a specific culture and period has been used as a way to silence or control certain individuals or groups. As a result, a less cultural relativist view of abnormal behavior has focused instead on whether behavior poses a threat to oneself or others or causes so much pain and suffering that it interferes with one’s work responsibilities or with one’s relationships with family and friends.
This is very true no matter which society or group you talk about. Whenever there’s a talk of mental health in history, the sufferers are always portrayed as the weak. There were a lot of preconceived notions in societies and people not attending to them or deviating from them were not only marginalized but at times even antagonized. Ever since stone age, human civilization has seen the strong prey on the weak. And in the pre-industrial world, with lack of scientific thought among most of the masses, mental health patients were reduced to a more or less the laughing stocks, the queer section of society that nobody wanted to know about or get exposure to. Their issues were treated as illness, mostly somatogenic and supernatural and less mental or psychological. At times, the people with mental illness were even termed demonic or the evil and were treated horribly. In fact, for much of recorded history, deviant behavior has been considered supernatural and a reflection of the battle between good and evil.
Thankfully, with thinkers, philosophers and scientists giving importance to studying the different aspects of mental health and mental illness(Hippocrates being the first to recognize syphilis as a disease) the acceptance of mentally ill in the society has increased. People with depression or other forms of mental health problems are not laughed at these days. And there are experts who we can talk to about these problems as and when we face them. I know the situation is not the same in many parts of the world, even in many parts of the country of my origin, but it’s changing for the better.
SRD.
The Quest for Essence 