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Essay / Changing Cultural Perspectives on Mental Illness
Throughout history, mental illness has been viewed by most world cultures in a religious or spiritual context. Mental illness was wrongly understood as possession by the devil, a spirit or as a curse, or as an attack of witchcraft or black magic. Mentally ill people were sometimes wrongly labeled as witches. When the causes of mental illness were poorly understood, religious, magical and mystical healings became very popular along with charms, talismans and other deceptive means. Holes were drilled in the head to release evil spirits and the mentally ill were burned alive in European countries during medieval times (Kemp & Williams, 1987). In Morocco, it was believed that mental illness was caught like a cold. When walking casually, one may absent-mindedly step on a bit of witchcraft on the path or accidentally drink it, thus "catching" a mental illness. In a sense, blaming evil takes responsibility away from the individual who suffers from mental illness, because it implies that the victim is innocent and not responsible for their condition. But on the other hand, it breeds fear, both of the sick person and of the possibility of suffering in the same way as the victim. Victims of mental illness were often ostracized, chained, or locked in dungeons, which only made their conditions worse rather than better. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The 17th century is known as the Age of Reason and the 18th century as the Age of Enlightenment, as reason and the scientific method came to replace faith and dogma to a large extent. The need to support claims using scientific data and evidence has been emphasized by scientists and philosophers. Such a scientific attitude toward mental disorders contributed to the scientific understanding of mental illness and led to increased compassion for people who suffered from it. In the 18th century, “madness” began to be seen as beyond a person's control. For this reason, thousands of mentally ill people confined in dungeons where they were subjected to daily torture were released into asylums where research into medical forms of treatment began. Today, the medical model is the driving force for the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology. However, the global scenario is far from scientific in understanding mental illness. Today, in some African cultures, it is believed that careless trampling on the substance of witchcraft can cause mental illness (Asonibare, 1999). People belonging to Buddhism and some forms of Hinduism who adhere to the philosophy of reincarnation and karma believe that mental illnesses are caused by bad actions in their previous births. Some uneducated Vietnamese attribute a number of supernatural causes to mental illness, including spirit possession, black magic, astrological misalignment, or the Buddhist philosophy of Karma (Nguyen, 2003). For the indigenous people of the Cordillera in the Philippines, besides various causes of illness, malevolent spirits and witchcraft are the main causes of mental illness (Janetius, 2003). Carl Jung's archetypal psychology highlights this perplexity and lack of cultural sensitivity. class phenomenon. The archetypal patterns found in our minds are part of the cognitive foundations of human beings. These archetypal models of the human mind.