Did religion play a major role in the history of psychiatry and the treatment of the patients in asylums?

by ichivictus

So I've been watching a few shows and this kinda came to mind. I know of a few things from an art history course that may have led up to it but no scholarly works or anything like that. The stone of madness, a 15th century work by Bosch showing the idiocy of nonprofessional doctors drilling in people's heads to treat them of their mental problems thinking there was a stone in there or something.

Then there's also exorcism. Maybe witch trials has something to do with mental health as well?

argent-skies

Foucault in Madness and Civilization doesn't touch on religion specifically that I remember, but he does argue that the pre-Renaissance period referred to mental illness as 'madness' in a sense that could be seen as divinely inspired. The rise of asylums and the institutions of psychiatry marks a departure from this paradigm of madness + religion.

Joan Brumberg also writes specifically about holy anorexia in her study of the disorder.