Cause Of Insanity Research Articles

Religious Insanity: A Diagnosis at the Intersection of 19th Century American Religion and Psychiatry.

Among the more common admission diagnoses of patients admitted to 19th century American asylums that have now disappeared completely from the psychiatric nosology is "religious insanity." This article presents a review of the historical and sociological research, which suggests the theory that religious belief and practice was a common cause of insanity, hence the diagnosis of "religious insanity." The way in which the diagnosis developed at the intersection of Protestant revival movements and the growth of modern asylum psychiatry in the United States, and thereby served several important functions in psychiatry and society, is discussed. The article concludes with reflections on how the rise and fall of the theory of religion as a primary cause or contributor to insanity in the 19th century mirrors the often conflicted relationship between religion and psychiatry in modern history and the difficulty in drawing scientifically reliable and morally justifiable lines between spiritual experience and mental illness in any cultural period.

Odpowiedzialność karna za popełnienie czynu zabronionego w stanie tak zwanej zawinionej niepoczytalności

Criminal liability for committing offences under condition of the so-called culpable insanityThe aim of this article is to analyse the problem of the criminal liability of a perpetrator who, while committing an offence, was in the state of inebriation or intoxication as a cause of insanity. Although the regulation of this matter was introduced in Art. 31 § 3 of the Criminal Code, it should be re-examined in the light of the separation of intentionality or negligence and culpability in the Criminal Code of 1997. Traditionally, insanity was treated as an exonerating circumstance, although the legislator mentions the elements that characterise intentionality and negligence. That is why, firstly the relation between Art. 31 § 1 and Art. 9 of the Criminal Code should be examined. Taking under consideration the result of this analysis, the article presents evidence that in the light of Art. 31 § 3 of the Criminal Code, the perpetrator can be sentenced only for a negligent offence.

“It was affecting the medical profession”: The history of masturbatory insanity revisited

There is a considerable historiography of the Western panic over masturbation which began early in the eighteenth century and which still lingers in mutated forms in the twenty‐first century. This article looks in particular at the nineteenth‐century phenomenon of the rise of the belief, initially, that masturbation was a contributory cause of insanity, and, subsequently, that a particular and identifiable form of insanity was the outcome of self‐abuse. By the end of the century the patients' fears of having risked insanity through masturbation were increasingly being seen as more damaging than the practice itself, though this might be blamed for causing the lesser affliction of neurasthenia. A number of scholars – some of them practising psychoanalysts and psychiatrists – have addressed this subject over the past fifty years. An account is given of the most significant contributions to the subject, and the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments analysed. It is argued that there are still several unanswered questions about the rise of the idea of masturbation as mentally (as well as physically) deleterious, and its decline. Some suggestions are made for reasons why fears of masturbatory insanity became so acute in the mid to late nineteenth century, particularly, within the European context, in Britain (this article does not address the particular hysteria and ferocity manifested in North America). Hypotheses are advanced for the still unexplained decline of the strongest version of the theory of masturbatory insanity several decades before the end of the nineteenth century. It is particularly intriguing that this decline is perceptible in the writings of those who had previously been leading advocates of the theory. Social, medicopolitical, and personal factors were all doubtless contributory, but a number of questions on this apparently extensively researched topic remain open.

The solitary vice: the superstition that masturbation could cause mental illness.

“Of all sexual conditions complicating insanity, none occupy the importance either in the professional or lay mind that masturbation holds. It is a vice of most frequent occurrence amongst our sane population, and it is almost universally practiced by the insane. That masturbation alone, in the normal individual, produces insanity is certainly not true; for were this the fact, the accommodations of our asylums would have to be so increased as to hold at least 500,000 rather than the 5,000 insane credited to our State.” “There should be a sharp distinction drawn between the masturbation of insanity and insanity produced by masturbation, or the so-called masturbational insanity. Even when masturbation is most persistent, there is no ground for positively claiming it as a causative factor; this we term the `masturbation of insanity.' It is frequently merely the first symptom observed.” “Dr Hoisholt, of Stockton, said that he heartily agreed with Dr Robertson in what he had said as to the popular belief in masturbation being a cause of insanity, and also as to the many mutilations that had been made with the excuse of helping to remedy the condition of alienation by removing the ovaries, clitoris, etc. He was of the opinion that more education on the part of the general practitioner of medicine, as to the proper relation existing between insanity and the sexual organs, in the question of cause and effect, was certainly desirable. While, as stated by Dr Robertson, we very commonly find masturbation accompanying insanity, we very rarely can say that the vice has been to any extent the cause of the insanity itself. It is more often the result than the cause, popular superstition to the contrary.”

Amin-e Diwaneh: the musician as madman

While engaged in research on the long-necked lute called Herati dutār in 1974, I was frequently told about a virtuoso dutāri (dutār player) who had died a few years earlier after a fight with a gang of ‘thugs’ in the city of Kandahar. His name was Amin-e Diwaneh. The Persian word diwāneh means ‘crazy’, and was applied to people who (in terms of Western psychiatry) might be classed as ‘insane’, though the cause of insanity was usually attributed to spirit possession. Diwāneh was also a description for individuals who were particularly erratic in their behaviour, and was often used affectionately. Amin the dutāri was such a person.

'Curses of civilization': insanity and drunkenness in Victorian Britain.

SummaryThis paper investigates the sources of the common Victorian belief that drunkenness was the most significant cause of insanity. While acknowledging the role of the Temperance Movement in promoting this belief, the paper argues that its development was rooted in the social conditions and prejudices of the time, as well as in the experience and reasoning of Victorian medical men. The asylums which reported the highest proportions of drink‐induced insanity generally lay in urban, industrial areas where drinking was perceived to be a serious problem and catered to a predominately working‐class clientele. The superintendents of the asylums were inclined to conclude from their experience that drink was the most common cause of insanity. Their tendency to do so was increased by medical uncertainty about the exact relationship between drunkenness and insanity, the habit of many doctors of reasoning in circular fashion, and their proneness to link theories of causation to traditional moral imperatives. These tendencies were evident in speculation about the causes of conditions such as paresis and ‘hereditary’ mental disorders.

Religious Insanity in America: The Official Nineteenth-Century Theory

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, psychiatrists and ordinary citizens agreed that one of the chief causes of mental illness was religious excitement. Discovery of hitherto untouched data from the 1860 census, giving supposed cause of insanity for 2,258 inmates of 17 asylums, provides the opportunity for exploring the alleged role of religion in producing insanity. Enshrined in publications of the U.S. government and in the chief psychiatric texts as part of the official theory of madness, the idea of religious insanity may have served a number of functions for the new profession of psychiatry, as well as offering afflicted families an optimistic interpretation of mental problems. A mixture of medical, moral and religious ideas, the dominant psychiatric theory cast opposition to high-tension, sectarian religion in an apparently scientific context.

Cannabis Indica in 19th-Century Psychiatry

The author presents a stuck of the history and usage of cannabis indicus (the 19th-century pharmacological term referring to the plant we today call cannabis sativa indica). His review of the drug's physiological and psychological effects reveals that most of the effects reported in the 1960s were known to writers of the 19th century, when the drug was alternately considered a cure for and a cause of insanity.

HISTOPATHOLOGIC CHANGES IN CEREBRAL MALARIA AND THEIR RELATION TO PSYCHOTIC SEQUELS

WORLD War II has again conferred outstanding importance on the problem of malaria. This illness, which more than any other was responsible for casualties in World War I, has played a tremendous role in the second conflict as well (Wales 1 ). The neuropsychiatric complications of malaria are more common than are generally known and have been recognized since ancient times. Malarial psychoses were known even to Hippocrates and Galen. Chavigny, 2 Porot and Gutmann, 3 Hesnard 4 and others made extensive studies of the malarial psychoses and proposed various classifications of them. Pasmanik, 5 who studied more than 5,000 cases of malaria, noted mental disorders in 2 per cent of them. Forrester, 6 who studied this problem during the first world war, stated that malaria was the main cause of insanity among the Macedonian troops. In a monograph published in 1927, Anderson 7 dealt in detail with malarial psychoses and

A Series of Cases of Encephalitis Lethargica at Whittingham Mental Hospital

Epidemic encephalitis has become an increasingly important cause of insanity among the population, and during the past few years this disease has been seen more and more among the new admissions of mental hospitals. The various forms in which this disease may manifest itself in the chronic stage are now well known, and can be intimately studied in any large institution. Up till the present, however, no account has yet been reported, so far as I am aware, of the appearance of encephalitis lethargica among patients already resident in a mental hospital.

Manual of Psychiatry

WAR has always been the most potent cause of mental and physical suffering among a people; apart from the many direct injuries such as wounds, sickness, and fever which are inflicted upon the fighting forces. In war, military necessities must precede any consideration for the civil population, which experiences stress and strain, two factors that contribute more than any other to the causation of insanity. Far, this xeason we should expect a greater incidence of insanity during war than in peace-time; yet, although this war has lasted nearly three years, and much pain, great sorrow, and almost unendurable grief have been borne, there has, been less registered insanity than occurred before the war, and on January 1, 1916, there were 3278 fewer cases than the year before. The causes for this diminished incidence are many. In the first place, it is a fact of experience that one great emotion is less frequently the cause of insanity than are the many small, but continuing, marginal, subconscious worries, which are always just within the limits of consciousness. It is also common knowledge that the working classes as a whole have been better off financially than in peace-time: the enormous demands of the world-war have created work on a colossal scale; the great industries of the country have been transformed into factories for the output of munitions and into workshops for the production of material for military requirements, and every responsible civilian capable of useful work has had his or her attention fixed, his or her interests maintained, and his or her domestic anxieties relieved. In spite of the greatly enhanced cost of living, difficulties connected with ways and means have even been less felt than in normal times, so that this diminution may be only temporary and due to social and econOmic conditions. Manual of Psychiatry. By Dr. J. Rogues de Fursac Dr. A. J. Rosanoff. Fourth edition. Pp. xi + 522. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1916.) Price 10s. 6d. net.

TRAUMA OF THE HEAD AS A CAUSE OF INSANITY.

There are two important questions in regard to the relation between injuries to the head and insanity. First, Is trauma a true cause of insanity, i. e., can an injury alone, acting on a normal man of healthy ancestry who is not suffering from cerebral arterial disease, syphilis, alcoholism or any other disease which affects the brain or who has not been broken down by the mere stress of life, cause insanity, or is the trauma a mere exciting cause, a provocative agent, which acting on a man already predisposed and ready to become insane gives him an opportunity so to do? Second, Does any characteristic type of insanity follow trauma? From the mental symptoms alone, while ignorant of the history of an injury, is it possible in any given case to know that a man is insane because he has received a trauma? As to the first question no

INSANITY AT PUBERTY.

Though pubertal insanity is rare it is important not only because many patients die and others are left permanently demented or imbecile, but also because in many of those who seemingly recover the attack is a warning of liability to mental breakdown later in life. Since the true cause of insanity is largely within the individual, is part and parcel of his mental makeup, depends relatively little on the mere accidents of his external life, his environment, and much on his ancestral history, and since the exciting causes merely give opportunity for insanity to arise, any mental abnormality occurring during the developmental period is of importance, however trifling it may seem in itself, as indicating mental instability or a tendency toward deviation from the normal, which under proper education may be corrected, but which if left uncorrected will certainly lead to disaster in the future. Mental disease appearing in childhood,

EXAMINATION OF THE STOMACH CONTENTS IN THE INSANE

Since the introduction of laboratory methods into asylums for the care of insane, the secretions and excretions of insane patients have been subjected to various chemical and physical tests. In the beginning the majority of cases were examined for scientific purposes to determine, if possible, whether any cause could be found in the blood, urine or glandular secretions to account for the mental alienation. While the microscope thus far has failed to reveal the ultimate cause of insanity, all of these investigations have been of use clinically and of decided benefit to the patients themselves. Nowadays routine examinations of the urine, blood and sputum are made in asylum laboratories and it is ‘in advocation of such regular examination of the gastric content and condition that the following few cases are cited. At the Michigan Asylum, examination of the stomach content in sixty cases, has been made within the past year, to aid in diagnosis. This number of cases has not been sufficient to warrant definite or absolute statements or conclusions and this paper is largely a report of progress. A considerable part of the earlier work was done in conjunction with Dr. D. Murray Cowie, of the Department of Medicine of the University of Michigan, and a report of it may be found in the transactions of the Michigan State Medical Society for I9oo. In nearly all the cases examined, Ewald’s test breakfast consisting of 50 grams of white bread without crust and a glass of water was the only one given. As a rule, the passage of the stomach tube was attended with no

American

American Journal of Insanity, April and July, 1895; Alienist and Neurologist, July, 1895; The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, June, 1895.Dr. Clara Barrus writes in the American Journal of Insanity an article on “Gynæcological Disorders and their relation to Insanity.” She tabulates one hundred cases in which examinations were made whether the patient presented symptoms calling for uterine examination or not, and is of opinion that a thorough physical examination is necessary in all female cases, since the manifestations which would lead to examination were only noted in three patients. Very often the pain and discomfort felt by insane patients is misconstrued, and so, while we get no expression of pain itself, we may find the patient suffering from delusions that she is pregnant, that she has been violated during the night, and so on. A synopsis of the table is given, and shows the age of the patient, whether married or not, the presence or absence of menses, lencorrhóa or masturbation, of anomalies and new growths, the condition of the uterus and external genitalia, and the kind of mental disease which is presented. The gynæcologist who learns that it is the exception rather than the rule to find an insane woman with normal pelvic organs must be careful not to assign these abnormal conditions as a cause of insanity, but to keep an open mind, suspending his conclusions until further data can be examined. No doubt the causes of insanity in women are as varied and many of them are identical with the causes of insanity in men, but women have an additional physical and mental strain resulting from the crises which they have to undergo, such as the establishment of puberty, the monthly period, pregnancy, the puerperal state, and the climacteric. None of these by itself is sufficient to produce insanity, and when any of these experiences are said to be the cause of mental disease, we must acknowledge that though these may be the exciting cause, yet the predisposing one is an unstable organisation, causing the patient to be disturbed by occurrences which would only temporarily upset a healthy organism. As regards the table itself, one must guard against the erroneous opinion that the lesions which present themselves are associated more frequently with certain forms of insanity than with others, for although there were thirty-six cases of melancholia and twenty-one of dementia, and only nineteen of mania, ten of paranoia, and twenty-four of miscellaneous mental disorders, we must remember that cases of melancholia and dementia are more tractable and more easily examined, while those of acute mania, paranoia and sexual perversion are examined with difficulty. The author concludes that each case on admission should be examined, and if there is any abnormality present it should be removed if possible; by this means the degree of nerve irritation will be lessened and one of the “stumbling blocks” in the way of the patient's recovery will be removed.

Winner of the Gaskell Prize

The following were the written questions:—1.—Give in detail the pathological changes found microscopically in the Cerebral Convolutions and Meninges in General Paralysis of the Insane. 2.—What are the mental symptoms which occur in Myxódema? How do you explain them? What is the cerebral pathology of this disease? 3.—Define “Judgment.” What is the difference between Judgment and Reasoning P What is the relation to Judgment of (a) Hesitation and (b) Doubt? 4.—To what morbid changes are the cells of the fifth layer of the Cortex liable, and in what form of insanity are these cells specially affected? 5.—Is there a distinct form of insanity which may properly be termed homicidal mania? If so, describe its characters and show how it differs from other forms of insanity accompanied by homicidal propensities. 6.—To what extent may the advent of puberty be regarded as a cause of insanity? What do you consider to be the mode of its operation?

LACTATIONAL INSANITY.Read in the Section of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women, at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association.

Nearly all writers upon insanity describe the mental derangements occurring during pregnancy, the puerperium, and the nursing period under the collective title insanity. Careful observation will, however, show certain points of distinction which may be noted, both in the symptomatology as well as in the causative factors of these mental disturbances. Those authors who classify puerperal insanity into the insanity of pregnancy, of the puerperal period proper, and of the lactational or nursing period, arbitrarily assume that the latter begins six weeks or two months after labor. In a general way this limitation though arbitrary may be accepted, for obstetric authors count as belonging to the puerperium that period of time occupied by the involution of the parturient organs which is usually stated to be six weeks. Prolonged or excessive lactation is given as the chief cause of insanity occurring during the nursing period. In most cases this is

Parant on Paralysis Agitans as a cause of Insanity

Parant on Paralysis Agitans as a cause of Insanity

1. German Retrospect

Dr. Ripping, in the “Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie (Band xxxix., Heft 1), considers the important clinical question of the relation of the diseases of the sexual organs in women to mental alienation. While he admits that changes in the uterus and its appendages, whether physiological or pathological, have an effect upon the mental susceptibilities of women, he is doubtful whether this effect is profound enough to become a potent cause of insanity. He is rather disposed to place such affections in the second or third line of causes as adjuvantia. The uterine diseases and the mental disturbance are sometimes the result of a common cause. “I have never observed,” writes Dr. Ripping, “a single case in which the insanity was a pure reflex neurosis of disease of the genital organs.” If in some patients this seemed to be probable, it was found on more careful examination that there were other circumstances which gave an easy and unforced explanation of the mental derangement. It is only after uterine disorders which, from their severity, implicate the whole organism, or lower the strength, as in continued bleedings, that insanity can be held to supervene as a result.

Tumours of the Brain and their Relation to its Mental Functions

Tumours of the brain have long been recognised as a cause of insanity, but different authors have regarded them in very different lights. Arnold quotes Morgagni and Bonetus, that tumours are one of 47 pathological changes found in the brains of the insane. Esquirol mentions them as among the morbid conditions found in the brains of the insane, but did not connect them with any particular symptoms. According to French statistics they occurred in the form of cancer in 22 out of 8,289 cases, that is, about 2·7 per 1,000. Dr. Sutherland mentions that he found 4 in 200 cases, or 20 per 1,000 cases. Tuke and Bucknill say that they only found 1 tumour in 400 autopsies, or 2·5 per 1,000. Leubuscher found tumours of the brain in four cases out of 358 autopsies, or at the rate of 11 5 per 1000. Fischer found not one case of tumour in 318 autopsies at the Prague Asylum. At the Carlisle Asylum we have performed 214 autopsies, and there have been 6 cases of tumours of the brain, which is at the rate of 28 per 1,000 cases.