Have mental illnesses increased drastically over the past few decades, or is it simply that we know more about identifying them? Have they always been so common?

by Kyfigrigas
Kelpie-Cat

While you wait for a response dealing with the modern historical period, you might be interested in an answer I wrote about mental illness in early medieval Ireland. As you'll see from that post, societies have conceptualized and categorized mental illness in many different ways throughout history.