Mental illness of today was typically thought of as supernatural phenomenon in ancient times. People often thought that sorcery, demons, or gods were punishing a person for their sin, explains Andrew Scull, one of the world’s foremost scholars of the history of madness.
Lacking a better understanding of its causes, mental illness — from melancholy to murderous rages — was blamed on gods and demons. There is no historical corroboration to understand this, yet there are stories that reflect the conflation of madness with supernatural intervention that was common.
Take the familiar story of the Greek hero Heracles (also known as Hercules). The goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus, hated Heracles because he was the son of Zeus by another (human) woman. Hera drove Heracles mad, causing him to murder his own children. From ancient times to the Middle Ages, to today, mental illness was often misunderstood.
Mental Illness in the Middle Ages
In Europe in the Middle Ages, people often saw mental illness as a spiritual malady. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, historian Barbara Tuchman writes that while depression and anxiety were recognized as illnesses by this time, the symptoms of depression, such as despair, melancholy, and lethargy, were considered by the Church to be the sin of accidia, better known today as sloth. And, of course, during much of the Middle Ages, people with symptoms of mental illness were often accused of being witches.
