When the first slave ship landed in America in 1619, slavery was accepted as legal for the next 246 years up until the 13th Amendment's ratification. Slaves were not treated as human beings at the time, but that didn't stop certain backward-thinking doctors from treating them as such and then acting as though they were flawed in some manner when they refused to become slaves. This was mostly Samuel A. Cartwright's creation.

Being a doctor, Cartwright assumed that any slave who attempted to escape bondage must have been suffering from an illness. He termed it drapetomania, and slave owners might cure it by beating their captives or amputating their toes.

By today's standards, Cartwright's efforts to use science to support slavery were shockingly irrational. According to his medical theory, slaves had little brains and underdeveloped nerve systems, making it impossible for them to be happy unless they were also slaves. All of this contributed to the lie that slave owners propagated, claiming that their position was advantageous to the slaves and that they were essentially doing them a favor.

Hysteria is a mental illness that has been around since the second century BC and is typically thought to primarily affect women, yet it's important to note that at one point, someone invented male hysteria as well. Hysteria in women was a physical issue before it was a mental one. For whatever it's worth, it was deontological in the past. It was included in the DSM up to 1980.

More sex, less sex, herbs, and even fire were all used as treatments in the past. Marriage was occasionally thought to be the solution. It was traditionally attributed to a wandering uterus, but Freud introduced the notion that it was a mental disorder brought on by trauma and repression. And because this is Freud, he basically believed that women not having a penis was the root of female hysteria.

The suggestion of uterine massage was made in case the condition couldn't be treated with conventional techniques. As you can guess, that involves massaging the uterus. This originated from a method that required some very intrusive manual stimulation and was initially created to treat a prolapsed anus. In the past, clinics saw more than 100 patients each day.

Mental illness has a long history of being the punchline of jokes, sometimes in an offensive manner and other times in a more tolerable fashion. Newyorkitis appears to be one of the few illnesses that appeared to have been nearly universally dismissed as jokes before later providing proof that people took it quite seriously.

Newyorkitis was a neurological disorder that affected residents of New York in the early 1900s. Despite how ironic it may sound, people continued to propose remedies for it. In 1908, you could visit the YMCA. They were employing "straight psychology applied directly to the aberrant conditions of metropolitan business and social life," as one of the doctors participating put it.

Dr. John H. Girdner was so intrigued by what he thought to be a condition exclusive to people in New York, of all places, that he authored a whole book on the subject. He claimed that many city dwellers led fabricated lives and that the loudness, materialistic pursuits, tall skyscrapers, and other aspects of the New York experience were inflaming people's minds, bodies, and souls.

The ailment, which supposedly resulted in nearsightedness (from all the towering buildings), itchy ears (from the noise), muscle degeneration, greed, and self-centeredness, was treated by doctors by sending patients to New Jersey for hydrotherapy baths.

Another form of schizophrenia that has been rendered ineffective yet was formerly a valid diagnosis. Consequently, what must occur for schizophrenia to become catastrophic? In psychiatry, catastrophic schizophrenia, sometimes known as schizocaria, is an outdated word for a rare and acute form of the disorder that causes a severe and persistent chronic psychosis (the recurrence of psychosis over time) as well as a decline in personality.

Most people would describe the disease as, well, extremely terrible schizophrenia. The condition must have an abrupt beginning in addition to "devolving into a significant chronic psychosis without remission." It moves quickly and furiously and doesn't seem to stop. Schizocaria, which causes "rapid deterioration of personality," is another name for it.

The outcome was dementia, which developed two or three years after the first diagnosis. According to the doctor's observations, patients in their late teens and early twenties appeared to experience it the most frequently. The diagnosis is now more commonly understood to be only an acute beginning of schizophrenia that is unlikely to improve with therapy.

In 2019, the World Health Organization declared that being transgender was no longer a mental disorder. Similar to how homophiles purposefully conflated and used the terms "sex" and "gender," they have done the same with the phrases "transgender" and "transsexual."

Although there are still numerous challenges for transgender persons and a severe lack of acceptance in many locations, most mental health specialists no longer view them as having a mental illness. Instead, it was categorized as a problem with gender in congruence, which is basically feeling that your ascribed sex and how you experience gender are inconsistent over time.

According to these guidelines, the WHO continues to recognize that transgender people may need medical care in some capacity but do not actually experience any pathological conditions. The classification was changed at the start of 2022, and it may help to lessen some of the discrimination transgender persons experience while also opening up more healthcare options.

There are few individuals in the history of mental health who have generated greater controversy than Sigmund Freud. He founded the entire discipline of psychoanalysis and probably made significant advances in the understanding and treatment of mental diseases, while also making a great deal of errors.

According to Freud, almost all aspects of human psyche have a sexual origin, and women are on the lesser end of the spectrum. Because they yearned to be guys, women experienced penis envy. His thoughts on women, who in his mind were little more than imperfect men, were mostly influenced by this oddly broad perspective.

Freud said that penis envy showed itself in women wanting their own fathers as youngsters and subsequently wanting to have male offspring because this was the closest thing to having a penis of their own they could ever have. The entire notion is now regarded as being utter rubbish.

American anxiety is no longer regarded as a real ailment, despite the fact that it was a phrase that existed back in 1881 when George Miller Beard authored a book detailing it in depth. Despite the fact that this sounds like it might fit neatly into contemporary society.

Beard thought that the ailments that were specific to America and absent from other nations. His description of American uneasiness included, among many, many other problems, things like narcotic susceptibility, hay fever, dental decay, early baldness, diabetes, and even the unmatched beauty of American ladies.

Beard, a neurologist who was reportedly extremely well-known, cited a number of causes, including environmental and social elements like science, the telegraph, and steam engines. He also charged women with having more mental activity. All of them combined to exhaust a person's mental resources and send them plunging into the depths of American anxiety.

The majority of individuals are at least vaguely familiar with what schizophrenia is. Unfortunately, the majority of people frequently relate this disease to the idea of being "crazy." Delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations, behavioral problems, disordered thinking, and other symptoms can all be signs of it. It can severely restrict or even obliterate a person's capacity to function. In spite of this, you might not be as familiar with sluggish schizophrenia.

The Soviet Union saw the most diagnoses of sluggish schizophrenia, which was used more as a political weapon than as a real mental illness. Imagine that a medical professional determines that you have schizophrenia and are a risk to both yourself and others. Either get medicated or go to a facility. The implications of that could make you feel really anxious.

You could be inclined to argue that you don't have any symptoms in order to defend yourself. Slow schizophrenia, though, got over that protection. Although you don't now have any symptoms, experts could accept that they could develop in the future. Either lock you up or medicate you right now. It provided a practical means of getting rid of those who presented political difficulties for those in authority. Among other abuses, victims of the diagnoses were subjected to harsh treatments without anesthesia or sometimes coerced into insulin comas.

Younger generations might be surprised to learn that homosexuality was once seen as a mental illness. Additionally, from a professional position, rather than only in the sense of intolerance, that there are others who hold prejudices against the basic concept of homosexuality.

Long recognized as a real mental condition by mental health specialists everywhere, it was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) until 1973. All recognized mental conditions are listed and described in that manual. Only in 1990 was it removed from the World Health Organization's list of mental disorders.

Some believed that homosexuality was an immature person's way of being stuck in the heterosexual phase. Others believed it might have been brought on by a birth defect or exposure to a disease. According to a different theory, homosexuals just have the brains of people who identify as the opposing sex, which makes them attracted to the "wrong" sex.

Many treatments were explored, some of which were much more horrifying than others. Hypnosis and the use of reinforcement to coerce homosexuals into believing they were straight gave way to conversion therapy. The use of lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy were two further, more harsh and cruel techniques. One medical professional "transplanted straight testicles" into castrated homosexual guys.

A significant portion of mainstream culture appeared to be driven by nostalgia, that warm, nostalgic attachment we have to things from the past. It's also quite profitable, whether it's just an era or particular things like movies and music. Just take a look at how Stranger Things and other television shows cram their narratives full of it. Retro gaming consoles also make a major splash. People enjoy liking what they formerly loved.

In the 17th century, nostalgia was defined as a mental illness marked by uprooting, having shattered contacts, and experiencing loneliness, resentment, and estrangement. Which seems lonely when spoken in so many words.

The name is derived from the Greek words meaning agony (nostos) and return home (algos). Patients were said to be manic with longing. Anyone who was away from home and yearned to return was affected, whether they were soldiers, kids who had been sent to the country, or practically anyone. Even some people faked it in an effort to get out and go home.

The symptoms ranged from depression to inflammation of the brain. It was once believed that a nostalgic bone was to blame. Treatment options could include weaning the patient off of their sentimental favorite to the much less kindly sounding enticement of "pain and horror" and later, shame.