Mental Illness

by Bright-Objective7860

Were there any pre-modern societies that recognized mental illnesses, specifically more drastic ones such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as physical maladies vs spiritual? At what point did the view on these illnesses change to something resembling how we view them today? Also, I sometimes come across figures in history who appear that they could have disorders such as schizotypal personality disorder, bipolar, schizophrenia, and depression, but I haven’t gone across any descriptions of historical figures with OCD or Tourette’s. Were these less common or were there simply few to no people with them who made it into history? Thank you

voyeur324

Your question is very broad and does not have one unified answer. I have previously found answers for this thread about mental illness in the Middle Ages by /u/sunagainstgold and /u/itsallfolklore and /u/hillsonghoods that will be of interest to you. Others might have more to say about mental illness in other eras and other places (most of the examples at the link are European).

See below for a link about eating disorders in history and the pitfalls of applying modern psychiatric diagnoses to historical people. The subreddit has previously speculated about Joan of Arc's state of mind. There are also numerous threads about Joan's visions compelling men to follow her into battle. More are linked below.

Bodark43

As voyeur324 says, this is very broad. However, one historical figure who quite possibly had Tourette's is Samuel Johnson. His jerking head motions and twitching face were noted by many- especially in his later years. His strong Christian beliefs seem to have led to anxiety and fear, constant feelings of shame at, among other things, his inability to work ( he was often depressed).

And of course for OCD it's hard to avoid thinking of Marcel Proust, sitting in his cork-lined room.

But no one at the time of Johnson or Proust would have identified these metal illnesses, and of course it is going to be very hard to reliably diagnose them now.