Ragalika Veeranala The word ‘hysteria’ originates from the Latin word hystericus , which means “of the womb” (Merriam-Webster, n.d). Owing to the obvious female origin of the word, Hysteria is regarded to be the first female-exclusive mental disorder (Tasca et.al, 2012). The evidence of which can be found in two papyri discovered in ancient Egypt, around 1900-1600 BC. They addressed what seem to be the symptoms of hysteria such as nervousness, agitation, depressive syndromes etc. and assign its cause to the movement of the uterus in the female body. The Greek physician Melampus said that women had gone mad because of an absence of orgasms, leading to a condition called “uterine melancholy” (Tasca et.al, 2012). Plato and Hippocrates proposed that the uterus became sad and sick if it didn’t enjoy the advantages of having sex and procreation (Tasca et.al, 2012). While some treatments prescribed sexual activity, others preached eternal celibacy, indicating that women were simply cons...

Rwiti Bhattacharya Roy "Eric" Cooper left Burma at the end of the war, but Burma never left him, according to his granddaughter, Ceri-Anne Edmunds. "Every second of every day, Burma was with him, even to his last breath, he would wake up with nightmares every single day." Cooper was one among the many soldiers in Normandy and Burma who saw and fought the worst of the second world war in 1944. These men had reached their breaking points and could no longer deal with the emotional repercussions of the War. Yet, they were described by doctors as simply “exhausted” and just given sedatives. One of the most common diagnoses was what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - characterized by physical problems, such as traumatic arthritis and digestive disorders, and psychological symptoms including denial, numbing, intrusive images and thoughts, and nightmares (Buffum et al., 1995). These symptoms weren’t exclusive to this disorder but with the scale of such ...

  Arihant Hemendra  Mental illness and more broadly; abnormal behaviour have been extensively portrayed but often misunderstood in records since not long after the human race started keeping records in the first place. The earliest archaeological evidence of trepanation - a common ancient and mediaeval “surgical intervention” dates back to 6500 B.C. (Capasso, 2002) Naturally, owing to the interactive nature of human existence, abnormal behaviour can seldom go unnoticed or impactful on the functioning of human society as a whole and thus it is obvious to have documentation of interaction and remedies to such behaviour. This blog post aims to trace, analyse and predict the approach towards abnormal behaviour and psychiatry in India. The development is grouped into three stages: Ancient, Medieval and Modern. Ancient: The earliest noticed evidence of; and attempted reasoning for abnormal behaviour dates back to the Harappan civilisation which possibly attributed such behaviour t...

Arpita Ghosh                Over the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the healthcare system was changing, especially for women in the United States (Reed,1992).  Standards of ‘health’ and ‘normality’ depended not just on the social and historical context in which individuals lived, but also on their gender. This blogpost aims to analyze the movie, ‘Frances’ (1982) directed by Graeme Clifford, which portrays the life of Frances Farmer, a Hollywood actress in the 1940s, shedding light on how mental illness was historically defined, inhumanely ‘cured’ and used as a tool to suppress women who dared to be different.      The movie begins with 16-year-old Frances writing an essay about her disbelief in God. Her ‘anti-deity’ essay won her an award but gave rise to controversial debates against her. She began her acting career in Seattle and soon got an opportunity to learn theatre in Moscow. Her mother, opposed to Communist parties, was ...

Deeksha Puri When one imagines mental healthcare spaces, they often think of them as far removed from deeply-entrenched socio-political inequities. This individuation of mental healthcare practice forgets that this space does not exist in a vacuum and can often replicate systemic injustices. Experiences seemingly inherent to mental healthcare (like access) can become privileges in themselves—with the likelihood of obtaining a diagnosis 73% lower in African-American individuals as opposed to their white counterparts (Lipson et al., 2018). Engaging with mental health discourse, thus also prompts questions of equitable accessibility. Using a historical approach, this blog aims to articulate how the origins of clinical psychiatry in the United States have contributed towards exacerbating systemic prejudice against Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities. To do so, it will majorly focus on diagnostic developments in American psychiatry during the 19th-20th century period ...