Schizophrenia In The Elizabethan Era

Throughout Shakespeare’s many works, mental illnesses have played an undeniable part in many of them, especially his tragedies. From Lady Macbeth hallucination of a bloody spot leading to her suicide, to Hamlet’s faked illness and Ophelia’s very real illness, afflictions of the mind are featured prominently in the Bard of Avalon’s many works. Still, in the Elizabethan era, understanding of mental illness was rudimentary at best, as were the methods of treating it. During the Middle Ages and Elizabethan Era, numerous theories about mental disorders and how to treat them abounded. Three plays of Shakespeare’s that feature mental illness most prominently are King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, while also managing to showcase the conception of

Hippocrates was the first to recognize that mental illness was due to ‘disturbed physiology’ as opposed to ‘displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession’. It was not until about one thousand years later that the first place designated for the mentally ill came to be in 15th century Spain. Before the 15th century, it was largely up to individual’s families to care for them. By the 17th century, society was ‘often housing them with handicapped people, vagrants, and delinquents. Those considered insane are increasingly treated inhumanely, often chained to walls and kept in dungeons’. There are great strides for the medical treatments for the mentally

Before the 1400s psychological issues, mental health problems, were viewed as a connection with the devil. The public viewed people with health problems as being possessed by a demon (Dualdiagnosis). Mental health wasn’t known in this time period, so people acting strange from the general public stood out. These people were treated in a few different ways: exorcism, murder, imprisonment, and trephining skulls; trephined skull is when a small hole is made in the skull to release spirits. (Lumen Learning). Everyone of these ways are very horrendous, but still very true to how mental ill people were treated. As a result, all of the treatments involved the mentally ill person dying or suffering. Mental ill people wasn’t understood at all in this

People do not realize how blessed they are to have the medical advances and medical technology

Before diving into the play and Macbeth's spiral of insanity, schizophrenia as a disease should be defined and explained. Schizophrenia is a disease that effects the mental state of people who acquire it. Schizophrenia is a detrimental to not only the social aspect of someone's life, but also likely their educational and occupational life. It can most accurately be defined as, "distortions in thinking, perception, emotions, language, sense of self and behavior" (WHO). All of these things are directly related to mental functions and understandings of someone and they are distorted or blocked when a person has schizophrenia. Worldwide, "approximately 1.1% of the population over the age of 18, or, in other words,... 51 million people suffer from schizophrenia". About six to twelve million in China, 4.3 to 8.7 million in India, 2.2 million in America, 285,000 in Australia, over 280,000 in Canada and over 250,000 people in Britain ("Schizophrenia Facts and

Mental health services in St. Louis have undergone a multitude of changes as stigmas towards mental health issues have begun to change. Traditionally, mentally ill individuals were thought to be lacking religion or in trouble in the eyes of God, and this thought process was believed until after the Middle Ages. These beliefs may have changed, but the attitudes towards the mentally ill were continued into the 18th century and beyond, which caused an increase in the stigmatization of mental illness, and thus subjected these individuals to humiliating and unhealthy conditions found in the original confinement of mentally ill patients, asylums. The government created mental health asylums, which separated these individuals from their societies,

Being socially acceptable was a necessity for maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the early 1800s but for the mentally ill, the cruelness of society took hold. In 1808, Europe constructed the first insane asylum, and their definition of “moral principles” were drastically different than they are today. In order for a clinical psychologist's work ethic to help with the improvement of others’ mental health, they should view the mentally ill as their equals, construct proper institutional care, and provide the use of effective medication. For the sake of the mentally ill’s recovery, well balanced citizens who lived in Europe during the 1800s had to treat everyone, no matter their mental state, with dignity and respect.

It was believed that patients who suffered symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and behaviour, and other symptoms that cause social or occupational dysfunction; characterised as Schizophrenia in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), were said to be suffering from demonic possession, mental retardation, or from exposure to poisonous materials. During this time there was no social support systems such as community based treatment like we have today. In addition, treatments that where available where barbaric and ineffective in helping the

Records of the disease date back to old Pharaonic Egypt, but it was not until 1887 that it was fully discovered by Dr. Emile Kraepelin. The disease was not dubbed schizophrenia until 1911 by Eugen Bleuler. One place most people have heard of schizophrenia is when the subject of witches or evil possessions come up. The most notable appearance of evil possessions found in history that was most likely schizophrenia would be the Salem Witch Trials in the late 1600’s. Modern day scientist believe that the women accused may have actually been suffering from schizophrenia due to signs they exhibited according the records taken during the trials. Until almost recently people with diseases such as schizophrenia were classified as being abnormal and many were subdued to horrible tests that are today considered inhuman and sometimes seen as forms of torture. “Early theories

According to Mathers et al., (1996) “Schizophrenia ranks among the top ten causes of disability worldwide and affects one in one hundred people at some point in their lives.” (Cardwell and Flanagan, 2012). Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder which is commonly diagnosed in 15-30 year old individuals. It disrupts a person’s cognition, perceptions and emotions, making it extremely difficult to diagnose. Bleuler (1911) introduced the term schizophrenia, which translates as ‘split-mind’ or ‘divided self’ and accounts for the earlier interpretations of the disease. These misunderstandings and the ongoing misrepresentations, especially within the media, has stigmatised the illness. This raises the need for better understanding and

Mental Illnesses during the Renaissance During the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, most mental illnesses were not attributed to witchcraft or demonic possession as has been widely believed. Witch-hunts or more precisely, trials for witchcraft, were relatively rare prior to the fifteenth century and, in fact, appear to have been most frequent in late sixteen and seventeenth centuries (Cohn 225). In most cases mental illnesses were believed to have physical causes (Kemp 1). Contrary to what has been written on the subject, supernatural causes of mental illness during the Middle Ages and Renaissance were most likely only applied to a narrow range of disorders.

Today’s society has a vastly different understanding of schizophrenia than the people of the Elizabethan era. Throughout the seventeenth century civilization had minimal knowledge of mental health. As a result, all diagnosis’s, therapies and treatments concocted during that period are considered pre-scientific to modern psychology. In the light of humanity's lack of comprehension people who suffered from schizophrenia were accused of witchcraft and in effect tortured or murdered. In A Noble Insanity, Peckham explains the indicted “…were indeed sufferers of a variety of mental disorders, including senile dementia, compulsive anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.”

(Szasz,1982, p.4, p.29) In 1900, the term schizophrenia, now used worldwide, was used to describe the condition that one out of every hundred people had. This statistic remains the same today. Through research and years of study, the world has a better understanding of schizophrenia, its forms, characteristics, symptoms, types, possible causes, and treatments, if any. ( Pierce, 1990. p.263 )

Dramatic stories of people with mental health conditions appear pervasively in almost every media outlet, beginning generations ago, and continuing steadily in modern society. These themes--of violent madmen, hysterical witches, insane criminals, and every other generalization of the mentally ill--perpetuate the harmful misrepresentation and stigmatization of mental illness, which is a common element in modern everyday life. One of the greatest factors contributing to this situation today is the presence of said misconceptions in printed media--not just modern works, but also the appraised classics, such as William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. Even as centuries pass and contemporary society advances, it is evident that ultimately, as the reader analyzes both Macbeth and Frankenstein, definitive British literature strengthens the negative stigma surrounding mental health, as it similarly misrepresents the legitimate issues regarding mental illness.

(Kalat, 2012). Bleuler used the term as a means of representing a major psychotic illness