Mental Illness, An Examination Of Prehistorical Skills And...

Mental illness, per the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is a â€Å"condition that affects a person’s thinking, feeling, or mood. Such conditions may affect someone’s ability to relate to others and function each day. Each person will have different experiences, even people with the same diagnosis,† (Mental Health Conditions). While the actual phrase mental illness cannot be traced back to 6500 BC, the knowledge and possible understanding of that time of someone with a mental illness can be. Ingrid G. Farreras writes in her article titled, â€Å"History of Mental Illness,† that â€Å"an examination of prehistorical skills and cave art from as early as 6500 BC has identified surgical drilling of holes in skills to treat head injuries and epilepsy as well as to allow evil spirits trapped within the skull to be released,† (Farreras, â€Å"History of Mental Illness†). However, the realizations of mental illness continued to grow and by the la te middle ages, the theory of the supernatural affecting the mind and causing people to have mental disorders dominated Europe once again. At one point in the 13th century, those who were mentally ill were even executed. However, it was not until the 16th century that hospitals and asylums came about. By the 18th century the views of those who were mentally ill began to shift, no longer were they seen as monstrous creatures, but humans who just needed more care. In literature, while the term mental illness did not make its appearance in early Greek and