What Did Ancient Humans Do for Mental Illness?

What did ancient humans do when someone's mind broke? Before neuroscience, before psychiatry, before there was even a name for what was happening — they didn't just walk away. They tried something. Anything. This video explores 3 distinct approaches to mental illness across ancient civilizations: Islamic medicine, Christian exorcism, and Indigenous shamanic traditions. From Avicenna's music therapy to Bedlam's chains — the line between primitive superstition and modern treatment is blurrier than you think. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES & FURTHER READING Trepanation & Hippocrates Hippocratic Corpus — first written record of trepanation Skull trepanning used in ancient Greece to treat brain derangement Hippocrates recognized epilepsy as a brain disorder, removing divine origin Islamic Golden Age — Avicenna Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) investigated the link between mind and body to address mental illnesses His approach to melancholic depression showed comprehensive treatment of mental disorders Philippe Pinel & Moral Treatment Pinel replaced coercive asylum practices with humane, dialogue-based moral treatment Introduced "traitement moral" — patient-centered approach founded on humane care Bedlam / Bethlem Royal Hospital Founded in 1247, Britain's oldest hospital for mental illness Became infamous for brutal ill treatment of patients Ancient Egypt — Ebers Papyrus Oldest medical document (~1550 BCE), contains 887 prescriptions Detailed mental disorders in the "Book of Hearts" — depression and dementia Provided treatments for mental illnesses and depression Indigenous Traditions Shamans cured mental disorders in many ancient cultures Traditional healers often became first choice for treating mental disorders in indigenous communities ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ancient mental illness, history of mental illness, mental health history, ancient psychology, history of psychiatry, ancient medicine, mental illness in history, how ancient humans treated mental illness, history of mental health treatment, ancient mental health. #MentalHealth #Psychology #HistoryOfMedicine #MentalIllness #AncientMedicine