Since ancient times, people have faced manifestations of insanity. Someone considered it an incurable disease, someone, on the contrary, a divine gift. What is madness? What are its reasons? Is it treatable? And if so, in what ways?
What does the word madness mean?
Until the end of the 19th century, the word insanity was used to describe a whole range of human mental disorders. This included hallucinations, delusions, epilepsy, convulsions, suicide attempts, depression - in general, any behavior that went beyond the normal and habitual.
Currently, madness is an outdated concept, which, however, people still actively use in colloquial speech. Now each specific mental disorder is assigned its own diagnosis. Madness is a generalized concept, which can be called any deviation in human behavior.
Forms of Madness
There are many different classifications of insanity. From the point of view of influence on others, useful and dangerous madness is distinguished. The first type includes the magical gift of foresight, poetic and other types of inspiration, as well as delight and ecstasy. dangerous madness- this is rage, mania, hysteria and other manifestations of insanity, during which the patient can cause injury and moral harm to others.
According to the nature of manifestation, madness is divided into melancholy and mania or hysteria. The first form of mental deviations is expressed in depression, complete apathy to everything that happens. People suffering from this disease experience mental anguish and anguish, and are depressed for a long time.
Hysteria and mania are the exact opposite of melancholy. They are manifested by the patient's aggression, his excited state and ferocity. Such a person may commit impulsive, thoughtless actions that often have dire consequences.
Insanity can also be classified by severity (mild, severe, and acute). With a mild mental disorder, people experience unwanted symptoms quite rarely, or they appear in a mild form. Serious insanity is a disturbance of consciousness that a person is not able to cope with on his own. Symptoms become more frequent and more powerful. Acute insanity is characterized by severe mental disorders that are permanent.
Causes of madness
Due to the fact that the forms and varieties of insanity are very diverse, it is very difficult to identify common factors that can lead to insanity. Usually a distinction is made between supernatural and physical causes of insanity.
In ancient times, madness was often associated with divine punishment for sins. Higher powers, making a person crazy,thus he was punished. As for useful madness, on the contrary, it was considered a divine gift. Another supernatural cause of this condition was believed to be possession by demons. As a rule, in this case, the patient's behavior was accompanied by uncontrolled actions.
Very often moral and spiritual problems can cause insanity. It is the repetition of trouble from day to day, great grief, intense rage or anger. All of these conditions can drive a person's mind out of control. The physical causes of insanity also include injuries, as a result of which the human brain is damaged. Leads to insanity and neurotransmitter imbalance.
Symptoms of insanity
Due to the variety of forms and varieties of insanity, it is impossible to identify single symptoms that characterize this condition. The only common feature of any insanity is deviant behavior.
Very often, insanity is a complete loss of control over oneself and one's actions. It manifests itself in the form of aggression, fear, anger. At the same time, human actions are meaningless or aimed at satisfying instinctive needs. Self-control and awareness of their actions are completely absent. In some cases, insanity is the exact repetition of meaningless and useless actions.
Symptoms of melancholic madness are depression, apathy, detachment from the outside world. A person withdraws into himself, reacts poorly to external stimuli, does not make contact witharound.
Insanity is often characterized by such symptoms as loss of sense of reality and time, mixing of objectively existing and fictional. In this state, a person may become delirious, say strange things and see hallucinations.
Cultural Madness
In the history of human culture, madness has not always been considered a disease. In some times, people considered madness a gift from the Gods, a source of inspiration. In the era of humanism, for example, the cult of melancholy flourished. This form of madness has served as a means of expression for many poets and artists.
In painting, there are a number of paintings depicting crazy people. Patients are shown on them with distorted faces, in ridiculous poses, with squinting eyes and terrible grimaces. Very often, their facial expressions and facial expressions do not correspond to the situation depicted in the picture. It's just crazy to see, for example, a laughing person at a funeral.
Literary works also often describe people with mental disorders. They can play the role of soothsayers and sorcerers or people with mental illness. The theme of madness is touched upon in both classical and modern literature.
Cure Madness
Throughout human history, there have been various treatments for insanity. In ancient times, they tried to get rid of this disease with the help of magic and sorcery. They tried to expel a demon from a person, cast spells over him and read prayers. There are cases when in the skull of a patientholes were made, supposedly helping the demon to leave the head of the unfortunate.
In the Middle Ages, madness was considered a punishment for people's sins, so it was not treated. As a rule, at all times people treated the blessed with apprehension and contempt. They tried to isolate them from society, expel them from the city or lock them away from the rest. Even in the modern world, madmen are placed in clinics and treated, having previously been protected from the rest of the world. Today, there are several ways to cure insanity. The word "psychotherapy" is used more and more often and includes various types and methods of getting rid of insanity.
