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Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of YNA Mental Health. Today's topic the history of mental health and how mental Health Came to be. Uh, sorry, guys.
I'm your host. Cheyenne joined today with Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. We've subcategorized each individual time frame into an era. These eras are not scientifically named. They're just names that we came up with. They're not factual in any type of way. It's just a way that we are categorizing them. But without further ado. The History of Mental health.
God's curse. Hysteria. Witchcraft. Demonic Possessions. Mad Men. Is this what comes to mind when you hear the words mental health or mental hygiene? Today we will dive deeply into a topic that's been around since the dawn of mankind the war on the mind. The battles within. Welcome to the history of mental health. The Dark Ages of mental hygiene. Mental health has seen its ups and downs. Treatments for mental illness were never simple.
Early documentation of treatment was found back in the new Stone Age, where small holes would be chipped into the skull to relieve pressure. Many would not survive, these leading to the use of more religious rituals in times like these. Many exorcisms took place. Priest Doctors believed they could expel these demonic possessions with holy water and the sign of the cross to demonstrate the power of Christ. However, not everyone who had a mental illness was treated.
This is where negative mental health stigma begins. Families who could not afford to take care of their mentally ill would abandon their family members to wander the streets. And if your illness was defined as dangerous, you would be thrown in jails or dungeons.
Wow. Welcome to the history of mental health It's kind of an explanation of what went on before proper documentation. It was kind of an era of trying to just experiment with what worked. And a lot of things definitely did change when it came to treatment, when it came to understanding mental health. But this is the beginning of the beginning. This is when it didn't have a word. This is when things were kind of just a beginning phase of how mental health was kind of born. I mean, they called it.
Demons like nobody knew. Yeah. And it seemed like the rich people got the short end of the straw because it sounds like they died pretty quick. Yeah. At least, you know the poor people who didn't get treated like they lived.
Yeah, that's very true. Because these treatments were so widely in. I don't like using the word insane, but truly were widely demonic in the way that they would fix things. And so the holes in the head were called trephining. These instruments somehow relieved pressure and by relieving pressure, it would you would somehow go back to being better. But then the question is, is like, how do you define what was good? And what happens if you just had a migraine?
What happens if you had like a headache? What happens if it was just like you were sad or you lost somebody? How would you deal with something like that? How would you even consider something as a mental illness this far along in history, or just the beginning of understanding how these brutal treatments were somehow okay? Everything was just okay. You just figured it out?
Yeah. I feel like everybody's moral compass there because it had to be, you know, this is like the start of the evolution of kind of just how we treat our own mental health. And people didn't even know it was mental health back then. So it was just it was just the way things were done and that we can look back on it now and it's like, man, that is really messed up.
But hey, if if they thought that was an issue and that was the only way to do it, they just they had to get it done one way or another. Yeah. And even the people that. You know, weren't in control that had these issues and didn't want to speak out because of like what was going to happen. I mean, maybe they still would speak out because like, they thought everybody thought the same thing, that like, there's something wrong with them or there's there's demons to expel the demons.
Oh, yeah. And if I was my my modern day self thrust into this era, I would be like, Jesus Christ. I would never even if I was sad or anything, I would just be like, everything's fine. Every single day. It'd be like, No, I'm good. You can keep that pick away from me. I don't got any pressure in my head.
That's what I'm saying. Like the risk or like, I don't know, Like what? Like the risk of knowing you're going to die. Cross your mind. Because if you were considered ill in that era and that was like the only way have they seen about treating somebody like just a ray of people just dying like really quick doing that procedure or what they did? Yeah, like, wouldn't that also cause kind of like a scare to, to the people in that era?
Like, oh, I don't want to be considered as like ill or I don't want be deemed as crazy because then I know they're going to do this to me and I'm not going to survive. I guess, like for the rich, you know, kind of like what we all just said. But for the poor people, they could just go on about their day and just kind of just lie about it. But the rich people, I feel like during that time they would have to lie about it too, because they don't want to be going through the procedure.
I'm pretty sure it was painful, don't get me wrong.
I mean, they could have wanted it, you know, It's like, I have to get this out of me. I have to expel the demons or I'm going to die anyway.
But we're looking at a time arrow That's also Dying was pretty, pretty high. You wouldn't survive very long in your lifespan. I would say you probably made it to your 30s before getting a really bad disease and then just died. Like there was no no one who in this era thought they were making it very long in life. Like you just had a very short window and that was it. Like either you died by some sort of illness, either you died in war or either you died in a very, I would say.
A gruesome manner, gruesome.
Manner, or an accident, something like back hit you in the head, like you weren't going to live very long, you know, like there was a lot of there's way too many ways of dying without any treatment. So. Mental illness could have honestly just been another one of those things that would have just been like, Well, I have it. I'm not going to survive very long either way. Like whether I died from this or died from something else.
Now, I'm curious about the the future of about age and how mortality rate is now. Like you live longer, right? What if we you know, when we get to the point that like, you can live till, what, 200 years maybe, but how many new, like mental health problems will spark between the ages of 102 hundred?
That's a good question. Yeah, that's a good thing to think about because it's just like, man, if I if in the future, let's say I'm like living to like 200, it's like, what type of mental health issues will I have? Like, what if we could live forever? 150 in like 200? Yeah. You know, forever. What? How many problems would there be? Like, would you have like, is it good to live forever? We're getting off topic. Continue. Yeah.
As we take a look back into the other Egyptians had a much more better understanding of what to do with mental illness. So an actual treatment that would be recommended by ancient Egyptian doctors or as they would call them, different kinds of what would you say? What were their names? Oh.
Like shamans.
Yeah. Like you could consider them shamans. They said to engage in recreational activities such as concert, dance and painting in order to relieve symptoms and achieve some sense of normalcy.
See, now, now that seems normal. It's like, hey, you should just live a happy life and then maybe you'll get happier, know, dance it out. Less depressed. Yeah, I think. I think they did a lot of psychedelics and probably that might have helped. They might have made it worse. I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but that's probably better than like, Hey, can you drill that hole in my head tomorrow? Like, can I set an appointment for that? I agree with you.
But I think everybody came to the same with mental health was a supernatural force. That stemmed from some unnatural occurrence in the human body. So it seemed like everybody was kind of on the same page and everybody had their own treatments. I mean, that's pretty normal to this day, too. Like every civilization, every country has their own way of like answering some sort of issue. They might go about it differently.
But some people, some most countries are on the same page, some aren't, and some have different views. I mean, but that's how natural healing came to what it is now, that people would try different methods instead of going either. Well, again, this is back then.
So different treatments were so vast and so completely different to the point that it was just and also you had no ways of communicating with other civilizations and figuring out what truly happened because a lot of work was either burned, destroyed or. Yeah. So we don't have enough information on back then of how these things were actually handled. All we know is that you get a hole in your head and you might not make it to next year.
But yeah, everybody had their own set of
Yeah. And I also don't think they thought You know, like we can sit here right now and be like, Hey, I know what I'm going to do next week or a year from now or two years from now because you already know you're going to live that far. Back then, honestly, you could have died like the next day with no like it's.
Brutal world free for all back then. Oh, shit. There was literally there was dust in the rain. I think I'm dying now.
Hypothermia was probably easily like you Like there was no issue like your water that you drink was probably from a well that's connected to the sewer system that wasn't even fully to the the level that we have it now. I mean, clearly there were just they needed flavor dye, They needed flavor.
They needed flavor. The Egyptians were cool, though, like after people died, they would, like dissect the brain in certain mummify them. Yeah but but before the purpose of research I mean that we all we can do is guess right. But like to look at the brain in terms of like scientific research, which was, you know, not much back then, but like that was like their trial, you know, at least they didn't necessarily stick to the same thing of holes in the heads.
Yeah. Well, I guess it is putting a hole in the head, but after death. Wow.
But as we get further along in our timeline, came about was asylums. And I think we're at that period now to enter into the next era to really talk about the full focus of mental health finally becoming what.
I would say finally being recognized as like is, rather than being like, Oh, this person just crazy.
Right? Right. Sort of.
Yeah, sort of. But anyways, we'll get into
From the 1400s to 1800s we enter into the Wealthier families sought out a new source of treatment as mental illness awareness increased through the centuries. They turned to hospitals for help and thus welcomed the establishment of early asylums. One of the first asylums to be formed was the Valencia Mental Hospital in Spain around the beginning of the 1400s. However, these hospitals were often poorly funded, creating treacherous living
situations. The main goal of an asylum was not to treat the mentally ill, but for families to have the ability to abandon their relatives so they wouldn't feel the burden or shame of taking care of their own. Due to low income and funds. There was an abundance of untrained supervisors who would treat their patients like animals. A hospital in Paris was described as a nightmare, a horrifying scene with patients sleeping in the dark cells covered in straw and feces.
Patients often only interacted with the outside world when food was delivered to the asylums. One of the most famous mental hospitals to be built was in London called the Saint Mary of Bethlehem, which later took on the nickname of Bedlam due to dirty and animalistic conditions. Patients would be displayed similarly to freak shows to raise money for hospital
funds. The inhumane conditions of the Saint Mary of Bethlehem created an initiative for governments to create their own asylums, which soon spread throughout the world like wildfire.
So this is where we begin the stigma. This is finally where we find out and have the biggest issue of mental health stigma. People were so afraid to talk about what they were feeling. Because if you had to discuss this with your family members and let's just say you were feeling some sort of way, they would physically take you and put you in a place where all you heard was.
These gruesome fighting, these horrible these disgusting conditions, these these just not humane conditions to actually live in, to actually think, to actually feel. You were just treated like I feel like you were treated worse than animals.
Exactly. And oh, my God. Such a the the vibe is very bad during this time period. And to have your own family turn against you or just abandon you like that, I could not imagine being put in that situation. And obviously, yeah, it's just like a bad, bad stigma that goes goes into thinking about asylums and mental health at this point because it's like, well, if you're crazy, then your family is going to leave you. You're going to be left to fend for your own.
And it's just like. Did. Was everybody just, like, empty back then? You know, like, I guess. So how did you have conversation? It's like, Oh, shit, Timmy's fucking sad today. Get him in the fucking get him. Get him in the straw barrel. Oh, my God. Oh, my.
God. It is messed up because, like, how I see How I see it is just like before you even go into the hospital. It's just. Yes, you could be going. Whoever back in that time period was how they were feeling. But just going into the asylum, you just come out worse. Like it doesn't do anything better. Like just like, Oh yeah, let's create the asylum. This is going to help people. No, it just makes them worse. I was going to say, you.
Probably wouldn't have came out.
No, people will probably die because of the Probably. What is it? What happens to you like being in such a horrible environment? You get like these these things on you. I don't know what's called.
Like rashes or just like whatever. And also, like, I feel like. Yeah. And like, my God, especially if you're in such a dirty condition too, it's like there's more room for diseases to grow or, you know, like a big case disease. And, and also like, you know, like the saying like, oh, you surround yourself with the people you want to be like. And it's like you're surrounding yourself with crazy people who are also being treated like animals.
I feel like you just kind of go down this downward downward spiral into insanity, like absolute insanity. And there's so much room for error because like, the people that work there, right, Like are the quote unquote doctors. It's like they they surround themselves with all these crazy people. And here comes like somebody who is just, I don't know, had it off a couple days and he's like, no, I'm not crazy, man. And he's like, okay, sure, buddy. Sure, buddy. Yeah. Now you're like, You're screwed.
You're not. You're not getting. It's probably the same way as it is today. You need a family member to, like, you know, come get you, check you out or. Yeah, like, I assume it was. You go there, you're there for life. Yeah.
And then, like, do they even let you out of maybe an hour or so, you know what I mean? And not only that, to just being stuck in there like I don't know what really happened, but like, what if somebody would just snap and just like, let's say if they were to go out or just whatever they really started. So like probably attacks inside the asylum either trying to kill, whether it's the doctors or the assistants that are there, or even just patients just trying to just they
probably confront each other. Crazy. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Easily. And I think another thing to remember and order. You know, these doctors had the power to do pretty much whatever they wanted to because A, you knew that the family members wouldn't never come back. B This person is like once you put a hierarchy on things and say that I am better than you, then that power of that doctor is going to go straight to their heads.
And they're like thinking that if I fix this person, if I can do whatever I want to this person, then I can find some treatment for God or I can find some treatment that will save the entire world. And so you would take a person like you would take a doll and just do whatever you wanted with them. It it didn't matter how much. And don't forget, anesthesia isn't there's no such thing right now. They just did whatever they wanted to and there was nobody to complain about it. Nobody could tell.
And even if you somehow got out of this system and went and complained about this to somebody, you went.
Back in.
Care. Yeah. You're literally.
Back in, Oh, my God, you literally cannot do And your life would be horrible if you were thrust into a situation like this. Yeah, but those guys there at this time, the professionals like their word goes Yeah. Said with the power like they can do whatever they want. Yeah. A lot of power trips going on. Yeah. Wow.
So I want to talk about Bedlam or Saint Mary I did a little bit of a deep dive into this to kind of understand what this hospital really did. I think the scariest part about this hospital was. Allowing their patience to kind of roam outside, which was believed as like one of the better things to do.
But they would be told to go and act like freaks so that they could raise money for the hospital because people would actually use this as like a kind of amusement because remember, there's no phones, there's nothing. Where do you get your entertainment from? From people hanging from watching people, like get slaughtered in front of you or you go to the brothels or whatever you would do. But there was no true form of entertainment.
And if you watch somebody kind of mentally go insane in front of you, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave it joy. It gave it gave them joy and excitement to watch all of this happen in front of their eyes. It's just something.
New. It's like the entertainment.
Exactly.
I think those hospitals will charge for the like, Yeah, you don't want to be like this or trying to give them like their lecture. Oh yeah, Like, or like, for example, the mom like, Hey, sweetie, you know, you keep doing this, you don't want to be like this person, that person. And who knows, even before the person winning, maybe they were like, How would you guys said earlier, maybe just like, all right, I'm not feeling too well this and
that. They went from just maybe just a little down to just completely batshit crazy and.
Displayed like a zoo animal. That is disgusting to like, think about now. Yeah, there were I mean, there were doctors, too, whether it was for their own personal profit or for whatever hospital they were working at. But there were several asylums who, like you could go there and like, like powerful men could pay to, like, be in a room with one of, like, like a person who's mentally ill, personal profit as a woman.
Because if they really wanted to use the towards the hospitals. But as the history that we looked over and kind of like did our research on, yeah, they never improved any of the asylums whatsoever.
For a while. Absolutely. This is fucked. Hundreds of.
Years. Years, Yeah.
Of nobody standing up and being like, Hey, long time. And I actually saw him outside mentally not okay. And then on top of that, if you think about like display shows, if you're with your little daughter, like you were saying, like your mom, your mom would be like, you don't want to be like little Timmy. You don't want to turn out and end up in here, do you? So whatever you're feeling, just keep it inside. You'll be okay. Like there's nothing to be worried about or scared about.
So this is a true form of manipulation on stigma. So again, like we said, this is this is where it all started. This is how it all began. This is why people don't truly probably talk about their feelings was because you were so terrified of being thrown into somewhere that you would never come out of. Yeah.
And it definitely got. 100% worse compared to the the last period, the beginning of mental health. This is like, you know, I would say one of the darkest times in our mental health history.
And we can describe what the cells were like So you would first be shackled to the wall inside of a cell with a bunch of other people shacked to the wall. They were iron cuffs. And so, of course, they could have been rusty. They could have been you could have easily been like poking yourself, bleeding from your arms. No problem. Um, allowing patients to sew like you would feed yourself.
So you would just probably I wouldn't be surprised if they just threw the food on the floor and were like, just eat it. Because again, this is being treated worse than an animal. And how would you sleep on a cold ground in the middle of winter? Like there's no heating. All you had was straw and your feces to keep you warm.
So all of these things like even if you weren't considered mentally, even if you were considered to have mental bad mental health, you would like you said, well, like you would naturally become mentally insane because you surrounded yourself in the kind of environment of the mentally insane.
I wonder what the suicide rate was during
You couldn't but you couldn't kill your. I don't believe you had enough opportunity to commit suicide. You're shackled to the wall, your arm, like there's no razor blades or anything that they could give you. I don't think.
You could use. I mean, probably chances they And they probably did, you know, and not even so that the doctors probably did it, too. It's like the doctors like, I'm going to die from the doctor. Like it's it's going to happen anyway, you know, like we have no idea what actually like, went on, but it all of it was specifically fucked. Yeah. Specifically, it is truly a nightmare. A nightmare scene.
So I know we've been trying to paint this conditions that these people lived in and were treated like and how this all began. And as we're entering into our new era, you kind of get a better understanding of how things were kind of shifted.
So let's hear it. Yeah, let's get into it.
From the 1800s to 1940s. We enter the war era in the USA. Mental asylum conditions continued to worsen with the civil war coming to an end. Many soldiers would come back with shell shock, which would later be called PTSD. An American advocate named Dorothea Dix, took a trip to England where she came down with horrible lung problems. During her hospital visits, she learned of the contrasting differences in mental health treatment compared to the US.
Completely shocked by this newfound information, she strived to change the mistreatment of mental health patients for the better. This led to the mental hygiene movement. Dorothea managed to incite change in the mental health care industry. However, many countries did not change, such as Africa, which had only just started its mental health reform. The first mental asylum in Nigeria was not created until 1906, with the conditions being much worse than that of more progressive countries.
It would take a brilliant genius to continue the psychological advancement of mental health. Introducing Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist referred to now as the father of modern psychology, who forever revolutionized our views on mental hygiene. He published 24 volumes of psychological studies on the structure of the human mind. He believed that the mind is split into the ID, the ego and the superego. The ID is the primary component of personality.
The ego is responsible for dealing with reality and the superego internalizes moral standards. Here are a few examples of each. The ID? A baby is crying because they are hungry and need food to satisfy the basic need of hunger. The ego. You're in a meeting and you become hungry. But wait patiently until the meeting is over to get food. Managing your reality. And lastly, the superego.
You are in the middle of a test and can see a classmate's answers, but you fight off cheating because you know it would be wrong. It did, however, take a while for Freud's ideas to become widely used. But the overall conditions of asylums needed to come to an end. Clifford Beer, a recent Yale graduate, attempts suicide and survives but suffers from a hallucination while recovering in the hospital. Is then sent to different mental hospitals for treatment and encounters such terrible
abuse. He took that experience and began writing a mind that found itself. The book becomes a wild success and Clifford pushes for another mental hygiene movement. The result created the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which aimed to generate more funding and research on psychiatric disorders. This opened the eyes of many government officials, creating better conditions for mental health patients.
Wow. I'm glad that they're finally getting to We're understanding human psychology and the different pieces of the mind, like they were saying, the superego, the ID and the ego.
Just with that, I feel like we can really advance the way that we think about, you know, whether or not a person is crazy or, you know, if they have a certain disorder, then we can actually help them on a case by case basis rather than just throwing them in dungeons, putting them in asylums, their families abandoning them. Now it's almost like we're getting closer to an answer.
And we kind of moved away from, like the We now finally have a word for mental health. Mental hygiene. A word that not only allows mental health to kind of branch off on its own kind of world, but to allow people to not use such derogatory words to make them feel like they're some sort of some sort of that they're not okay. And so I think it's a beautiful movement that we finally end.
Thank you. Miss Dorothea Dix, you truly have pushed for such an incredible movement and for all women who are out there. We truly believe that. She is the person who takes the first step and she is the one who really got us into the understanding of. What these asylums are truly like and how they treated their people. How they treated their patients and kind of came forward and said, No, this is wrong. What we're doing is wrong. These people do not deserve to be treated like this.
These people deserve to be cured or these people need a new way of treatment. So for women like back then, being able to stand up on your own again, your word was not taken so seriously.
It takes a lot of bravery.
Yeah. Like, can you imagine standing up King Henry and saying, Listen, what you're doing is completely wrong. What you what you even like, how you're treating these people is completely wrong. And these people were treated worse than animals. You're kind of standing up for people that aren't even looked at as human beings.
Changing the way of life. It was it was super important. And in listening to that story, I'm very surprised that people weren't just like, she's crazy. Put her in the hospital. Yeah. Like, that's. That's probably the risk she faced. Yeah, 100%.
And as we move further along in history, can you imagine watching your friend, like, blow up from a cannon in front of you and then going back to your normal life and trying to express what you saw like and just keep keep your life completely normal? Because again, PTSD was not what PTSD is now. And we have a name for it and everything, calling it shell shock. But. Like, can you in the amount of wars and the amount of like. Uncivilized things that would happen in the streets like it was.
Shocking. But of course, that was back then in. Time in history is completely different. What we morally objectify things as being morally correct and having the right and wrong and being like, you just can't kill your friend outside your neighborhood because he decided to punch you in the face or something. Like, yeah, it was much more, I guess, unstructured. But we were finally reaching a structured civilization of understanding how to be better people.
Yeah. And with, with, with the war going on, to the point where we had to pioneer this new mental health movement. And Dorothea really laid the tracks out for that, including Clifford Beer. They really just opened the doors to this. But also with, you know, PTSD, like with shell shock, with these soldiers coming home, dealing with all these traumatic events. It's like this had to happen and this was the right moment where everybody could come together and be like, this needs to be done.
Even coming back from the war for those life? Because I know that the asylums were still up and everything, and this is kind of like the big push of, you know, starting something new to start revolutionizing mental
health. Like kind of, like you said, with the shell shock, like these soldiers coming home, like they know, they think to themselves, like they probably sit in their rooms or if they came back to their wife, their kids, whoever the case may be like, how will they talk about their situation? I mean, I know they'll talk about it with their with their wives like this is what I
saw. But then when it comes to actually getting help, I know back in their mind they'll be scared to go either to the asylums because of what they probably heard over the years, saying they're about to be treated inhumanely and things into that nature. But like. You know, I guess to me is during that time of the war was like, what was the first treatment or the first big push of, you know, finding new treatment, new practices to help with these soldiers who are coming home?
Well, thank God for Dorothea Dix, because it actually do anything, because her goal was to raise millions of dollars to build hospitals that were actually suitable for care all across America. So not only did this, this wasn't like an overnight thing where she's like, Yeah, I'm going to fix the mental hygiene world. It took over 40 years just to even get this to a level of like, Yeah, maybe what we're doing is not okay. Like, you know, But yeah, like we could keep doing it.
I think that's something interesting to If there was no war, right? If there was just world wide peace. Would we be in the same place as we were mental with mental health facilities and mental health research as we were like two 300 years ago?
Right, Because it seems like listening to this, that when all these soldiers, you know, were back in civilian life, that's what really set it off because there's just this huge, huge these just a huge group of people that come back at the same time and are like, I'm not okay. But like, I don't want to say I'm not okay. Like, there's something else here.
But also with Dorothea Dix and seeing like things going on with the war and how, you know, messed up people are getting like, where would we be if like there was no war? Like, so not only is it like a war with like guns is like a, you know, a mental war.
I think it also goes to the physical aspect off, like or you got you had to like do surgery above the knee or something, you knew you were losing that leg. So they had to make they had to advance in medicine faster than they had to advance in mental hygiene because it was like I lost my leg. I need the issue resolved now instead of because mental health. It would take like a longer kind of like it would break you down and it would take much
longer. But in the end, I would say like, your mental sanity would just like get worse and worse, and you were forced to live this life of just being like, Everything's okay and I just need to keep my day going. And there was no actual treatment. Like, there's nothing like you could just have to go like, Yeah, I'm just going to go about my day. Even though I just watched my friend blow up in front of me like a couple of days ago.
Neither ego and super ego will be will be what we just are what kind of like the readings said about like the ego basically being responsible for dealing with reality like they're in the war like and I'm pretty sure they want the war to be over, but they have to wait for the war to be over when they can get back home. And then once they do, then their their super ego kicks in is just like kind of like the example in the middle of a test.
See a classmate's answer. You fight off cheating, but you know, be wrong. But like to them, it's like. They know they need help. They want to get help, but they fight off getting the help because they knew what's going to happen to them if they go request for help. They thought they don't want to go to that. Yeah, they thought it was wrong and they don't want to be treated as. As what happened in the asylums or wherever they will go to.
They don't want to be treated wrong. Like, you know, I fought off for my country. You know, I defended my country. And for me to come back home and ask for help, I'm going to be treated basically like shit or show for other people. If I could just only imagine, like the battles going through their mind, going back and forth, like just walk either pacing back and forth or just like internally screaming with themselves, like. There's no hope out there.
Yeah. And also with Sigmund having published it really helps put it out there that, you know, this is how the mind works and this is what what the actual issues are too, because I'm sure it was like, you know, for public knowledge or for anybody who really wanted to know rather than, you know, having to go back and be like, oh, this is what we did in the past. And this like kind of works now.
They actually have something to grab information from to actually have in a library of how mental hygiene is and how it works and how people's minds are structured.
And also with going off of Clifford Bierer, that time being Caucasian and white was gave you a little bit higher standing status in life as well. But sending him into going into these mental asylums and being considered mentally insane after you just tried to commit suicide and it didn't work and now you're stuck in these facilities for God knows how long like. To create that book, to have that much self-awareness, to be able to gather thoughts in a condition where.
Thoughts are considered mental insanity. How do you even continue to think that you are okay and then come out of it? And be able to publish a book that allows people to get a better understanding. And finally, a voice in the dark tunnel. As much as Dorothea Dix. I believe that her she had the she put the tracks down in the tunnel and we could consider this all as an example of a dark tunnel. She put the tracks down.
Clifford Beer was pretty much like a light at the end of the tunnel because his he was a male Caucasian, was able to get his voice out there and be able to get this to the people, to have them understand what's going on and then have them stand up to being like, Hey, this is wrong. We got to make sure that everything is going to be okay and that these people cannot be treated like this, because clearly I was treated like absolute garbage.
Yeah, he he really opened kind of the eyes of health, you know, because it was kind of thrown in their face, like this is how people are coming back from war and rejoining society. We need to do something about this now. And here are the studies to back up how these people are acting. She read that book and everybody's third eye just fucking sprang. They're like, Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess. I guess it's a problem. Yeah.
So as psychology continued to advance, There are a lot of also UN defining factors about Sigmund Freud. He wasn't one of the best human beings in the world. He did have something against women. I mean, with every brilliant genius, we're not always perfect.
But in his level of psychology and understanding was absolutely incredible to be able to not only change the way that we thought, but also help treat people into understanding what kind of mental disorder they had was absolutely eye opening because at that time, being able to have your theories considered, being have your theories understood, and be able to implement them into normal psychology on people. Was also terrifying because at this point, treatment is so widely different.
So how do you get accepted on your side of treatment? Like not only was there so many different people trying to do so many different things that. He was lucky enough and also had enough knowledge to kind of push this and be able to kind of widespread this and make sure that people weren't getting rods shoved into them by Mesmer, who was another truly insane doctor that would need a whole other podcast episode to talk about. Yeah.
But in this era, you know, things are And I feel like from this time period forward, we're actually on the right path to understanding rather than just having the quick fixes for things.
And this is where all treatments begin to
Like the experimental testing's.
True experimental.
Testing. Yeah.
Like there's groundwork laid, you know.
So we finally move away from. Testing out weird treatments into finally having structured treatments that could help. And now we're going to enter into our next era, which will give you a completely better understanding of how things are treated.
From the 1940s to the 1980s. We enter our pill era with World War two ending soldiers. Overall, mental health conditions declined rapidly. Over half a million soldiers came home with some sort of psychiatric disorder. Various treatments were used, but the most common were somatic treatments. These treatments were electroconvulsive therapy, psychosurgery and
psychopharmacology. Electroconvulsive treatment was not used to treat many patients and was instead used as a punishment for these poor souls. Electroconvulsive therapy is still used today, but only on extremely rare occasions. Since these treatments were ineffective, lobotomies became the new widely used form of mental health treatment. A lobotomy is when a patient is shocked into a coma following the use of a tool that resembles an ice pick.
This pick was hammered right above one's eyelids to disconnect nerves holding the emotion center and the frontal lobe of the inner brain. The bottoms were quick and cheap, leading to their widespread popularity. However, side effects began to set in. Many patients felt emotionless and disconnected from reality. Roughly 25% of patients died following this gruesome procedure. Psychopharmacology is what changed the entire mental health treatment plan of this
era. In 1949, the drug lithium was introduced, which led to the use of chlorpromazine better known as Thorazine. And then Prozac became the number one antidepressant used for treatment. Rapid deindustrialization helped push for psychoactive drugs to take over the market. But unfortunately, many mentally ill patients continue to not receive the proper treatment, even when medicated, causing an increase in homeless and addicted mental health patients.
Finally.
Finally the pill era.
We have reached an era where everybody treated in a way better conditions. But we had to try a bunch of, again, weird things to kind of.
Yeah, like electroconvulsive therapy Oh, my God.
What?
Horrible. It's like we're all the way back to
I just want to know who thought lobotomies This is the answer. Shoving an ice pick in between, like. Every time I describe it in like imagine it in my head, I just get more and more like, freaked out.
Yeah, I think of a horror movie.
Literally. And to think that. You could walk into your doctor's and be like, Hey, I need a lobotomy. And they'd be like, Oh yeah, okay. It's going to be Because it was said that it only took ten minutes the procedure. That's why it was so quick, cheap and to the point and gave the quickest treatment. But the issue with severing those nerves was that you would end up becoming a I would consider or I would call it mental zombie.
Yeah, like a mental zombie. Exactly. That is the perfect word for it. And it's it's just so gruesome to think about, too. And it's like we went the wrong direction because we found out all about our brain as human beings. And then we're like, you know what? Let's take something that looks like an ice pick and let's poke that thing and let's sever the nerves. Let's sever the nerves. It's like, Oh, come on, we're almost there.
But, you know, and this is more towards the beginning of this pillar, but it really kind of, you know, led to people using more antidepressants to cure things rather than, you know, having these brutal lobotomies.
And lobotomies were only used on supposedly But at the same time, I personally think like, let's say one of your wealthy friends comes up to you and he's like, I just got a lobotomy. I feel. A lot better than I was. I don't think it would be very difficult for you to go up to your doctor and consider yourself violent or just pay them a lot more money and be like, Hey, I just want this procedure done.
So as much as you can say like it was focused on the uncontrollably like violent people, at the same time, if you really wanted to get it done, you could.
But like with lobotomies, though, I don't I'm pretty sure everything was cut off in most cases. And I think they did that like they wanted that to happen. The doctors who did this, this psycho type therapy. But I'm pretty sure you were essentially just a walking zombie. You had to be like your sense of purpose no longer existed, your ego no longer you're just a body. You're literally a zombie. You can't speak. You can't, you don't even I no one knows, right?
Because they can't explain what's going on in their head. But it looks like they can't even think. They don't have a mind of their own. It's just you have to physically lead them somewhere. Like doctors would have to. You'd have to link their arms and you'd have to walk with them.
But they were it shows that they were like Like you were, you physically felt fine. But the issue was like. You would be unnaturally calm and shallow and you would have no absence of feeling. So you would lose the sense of being human. So you would consider that a zombie at that point? Like if they if.
They were physically violent, they definitely Oh yeah. It's like, great, I'm numb now, but my quality of life is just kind of dull. Dull? Yeah. But does that nothing does that increase quality of life or does that decrease it? Because if you no longer want anything. Well, the thing is that, you know, I feel like some of these people, they lose these emotional connections that they have to things good and bad. So it's just like they're getting rid of all the good and bad things that go on.
And then after that, like you said, we just become zombies. It's like, is that really how you would want to live life? It's like, yeah, like I don't feel the pain that I once was, but I also don't feel the joy.
That I also did. I think it was like like a roller coaster, right? Like it would. You're living just the way that you would live would increase at an extremely high rate. Right? Because you don't have these crazy emotions running through your head. You don't have the thoughts. You're you're living life. But as you continued with life. That's when everything was doing extreme like decline. And this is where and this is why lobotomies were quickly just like, no, let's kind of get
rid of this. And more new methods of pharmacology came about where pills and medicine were more of an understanding. But hey, as much as we can sit here and say that pills were in great advancement, people would still get addicted to these. And no. And these doctors didn't have like, I can't sit here and prescribe you a normal dosage to them. A normal dosage was probably, max of what it was. So you can sit here and say the medicine was very important.
And it was and it was probably truly one of the greatest things to have come around for mental health. But you were probably given very high dosages of whatever they were giving you. Oh, yeah. And again, there's no law to this. There's no law on pills yet. There's no like, I can't prescribe him this high level without having any issues.
Yeah. Early in the pill era, there was like a Like, numbing. Type medications like tranquilizers, That's the word. Those were just over-the-counter. Like at the very beginning and then even afterwards when they were prescription only. And we're talking like older generation, like heavy tranquilizers, like, yeah, you're that's a tranquilizer. Yeah. You know, but like, the doctors still like they didn't there were no laws regarding it was just like, oh try a fucking tranquilizer.
Like, yeah, try some horse tranquilizer. I'm feeling pretty bad today. Just. Okay, I'll prescribe you this. Go pick it up. It's like, Yeah, this this works really good. Can I get more? And then, you know, then they're fucked up for however long it takes them to get over it. Oh, yeah, that sucks.
Though, because then you kind of like Um, previously when we talked about the procedure. I can't pronounce lobotomy. Lobotomy? Lobotomy. I kind of like was just described as, like, emotional core. You go up or just like, right after. Like you get over. Like you don't feel anything, but like, what about the deeper, the deeper purpose of life? The deeper meaning like. Yeah, depending, like, depending how old these people were.
Like, what if you wanted to find love or you want to enjoy going here or going there or just. Making yourself a whole new person, but you can't even enjoy that because you lost all sense of reality. All sense of emotions within your own self. So and also with the pills too, like, yes, that is great as well that pills came out and help people. But then at the same time, like. So when it comes to follow up appeal pandemic, people are going to start getting
addicted. Then that also takes control of their life, too. So you still lose sense of reality, still lose control of your whole life. And it's just like. I think later on until they start actually enforcing laws to not give such the max dosage, but actually like small dose amounts of what they think a person can take. And of course, if you need to up it, then of course you have to get it prescribed a bit as well. But I mean. These are all great things that happen except for lobotomy.
But the pill. At least that's great. But I mean, like.
It still has its negatives that come with it. And also. A lobotomy. You can't really come back from that. You know, people get back from drug addictions, from being, you know, overusing anti antidepressants and things of that nature, whereas like the lobotomy, it's like it's disconnected forever. There is no going back.
And so also, if you think about it like this We're. At this time period, we're a little bit more advanced. World War Two has come to an end. A lot of countries have fallen. And so, of course, these this medication was more widely used here. But think about the other countries that are still extremely behind on just the level of understanding of mental health, Like imagine countries like Nigeria.
Imagine countries that are third world countries trying to just get a better understanding of just like not like treating these people still like mentally, mentally insane and putting them in asylum. So we still if you really, truly think about it, like mental health has the word being described as what it is now has truly only been around for about. You could say like less than a hundred years. Like we as far as we as far as we came in mental and I'm sorry.
And as far as we came in physical health, understanding the anatomy of the human body, being able to do successful surgeries. If you do lose your foot, lose your arm, whatever, you have a higher chance of living. But still, we are so far behind in understanding our own mental that it's truly just the beginning for mental health. It's truly we are still we still haven't even, I personally believe, scratched the surface of what we could do to help people.
And this is where therapy and counseling become such an important factor of CBT cognitive behavioral therapy coming into play and giving people new routes and understanding of how to go about getting the help that you need.
From the 1990s to present day, we have The mental health field has undergone significant changes and advancements since the 90s. There began a growing recognition of the importance of addressing mental health issues and reducing the stigma surrounding it. This led to increased funding for research such as the National Institute of Mental Health. Additionally, the development of new treatments such as the widespread use of antidepressants and the introduction of cognitive behavioral therapy.
In the early 2000s, there was a greater emphasis on early intervention and prevention, focusing on identifying and treating mental health issues in children and adolescents. This led to new programs and resources for schools and families to support mental health and well being, such as the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
Counseling professionals began to play a critical role in providing support for children and adolescents through individual and group therapy and addressing mental health issues. In the 20 tens, there was a growing awareness of the need for mental health services to be more accessible and culturally responsive, particularly for marginalized communities.
This led to increased efforts to integrate mental health services into primary care and to provide support for mental health in the workplace, such as the Mental Health First Aid program, which was first introduced in Australia in 2001 and later brought to the US and other countries. In recent years, the global pandemic has highlighted the importance of mental health and its impact on overall health and being.
It is also brought to our minds the challenges of access to mental health services, especially for those who are socially isolated or experiencing financial difficulties. In addition, the rise of technology has made it possible to provide mental health services remotely, such as through tele therapy. This has helped make services more accessible to people in rural and remote
areas. Overall, the mental health field has made significant progress in increasing awareness, reducing stigma and improving access to care. However, there is still much work to be done to ensure the mental health services and information are spread worldwide.
We're finally here.
We made it.
You did it, guys.
What a journey it's been since the beginning
From holes to your head to now being able to
We're definitely the best version of Kind of. Kind of for the time being, until until the future hits.
So let me ask you guys this. When it comes to the pandemic going back to 2020. I feel like we have drawn a line in history of when things kind of began to truly shift into a better understanding of. How to talk about your problems, how to deal with them and how many people have actually come out now. To talk about what? What's going on inside of their heads. Do you guys believe that the pandemic has shifted mental health into. The right direction or are we still spinning out of control?
I think it was another. Worldwide life changing events that kind of. Put us in our place to realizing what we need to focus on. Because with so many people being at home, it's like they had to face themselves rather than going about, you know, going to their 9 to 5 dealing with other aspects of their life. This really made people sit down, look in the mirror and realize or like ask themselves the questions like, am I okay? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have these issues?
How do I really feel with myself? Yeah, I agree. I don't think much has changed in terms of. What we actually do differently in the sense of like treating the brain. But we've given because we've given more thought to it and more access to people being open to talking about it. That like paves a new road for like where it'll now go in the future. Yeah, I hear you. I definitely think that this is leading to our therapy age, you know, where it's just becoming more prevalent in today's society.
You know, people talking things through and getting a little bit away from antidepressants and drugs that, you know, kind of balance the the chemicals in their mind.
Yeah. And I hear you on that. Like it kind of like personally, I never took antidepressants, but I guess like from talking to others, like, I kind of like clouds their mind when taking these antidepressants and kind of like with the pandemic, like I said, it definitely served as a catalyst, as a big push, even though in a bad way because of what happened to the people who lost their lives due to COVID. So I'm not going to forget about that.
But it did serve as a catalyst as well, you know, to push towards mental health and to kind of, like you said, shine like you're away from all your distractions, working, going here, doing that, getting yourself out the house. And then of like when you do sit in front of the mirror and come face to face with yourself, you do ask these questions like, you know, how am I doing with myself?
Like we're having to start these deep internal thoughts with ourself and, you know, which is really good because then like, then people can start really thinking to themselves, like, maybe I do have a problem.
And then of course with remote, um, remote help and having yes, there teletherapy, having, having this is a really good thing too, because like what you said as well, that maybe people who live in the, in the middle of nowhere on farms, things like that, who don't have the access to go that far out, you know, they can just stay in front of the computer and talk to whoever they're talking to, their therapist, their counselor, whoever it may be, and get the help that they need.
And, you know, then they feel really good about themselves because, you know, there's there's more access, more resources out there, even with schools as well, even beforehand, I can remember that mental health was not really talked about that much or people wouldn't really, you know, talk about their feelings.
But then now that every a lot of schools and universities now are pushing the agenda, like if you really need to talk about your mental health issues like to come see us like, you know, they want everyone to be okay which I love that like I really love that. I love how nowadays that, you know, it's it's accepted. It's, it's wonderful to talk about your feelings no matter what you're going through. Yeah.
And I also think that antidepressants are or how important medication is and just how much we've advanced from being able to go from me, getting shocked to me just taking a pill to feeling a lot better in my thoughts and understanding whatever you're dealing with.
Like whether you go to the medication or counseling route, like choose what's best for you and choose and understand and have a lot of self awareness, which we talk a lot about on this show and have these deep motivational, motivational conversations with yourself to kind of get you not only to where you know you can be, but be there mentally, physically and have a better understanding of that. Whatever you're dealing with, it's it's okay to not be okay.
You know, have these conversations, be mindful, have self awareness. If you need help, get the help that you need, whether it's through medication or counseling. But.
Yeah. On the topic of lobotomies, again, I of what you said, I forgot about it, but I remember it now in terms of, you know, is that like the way to live with. I kind of think about it like a heartbeat where you said roller coaster, right, with lobotomies. But in this case, with like, the actual feeling, Are you feeling okay? Are you happy? Are you bad? Like, I think people make the mistake of chasing happiness and that's okay to do right to a certain degree.
But along the lines of how we described a lobotomy where you're kind of just there, you have no purpose, you have no happiness, you have no sadness, You know, is that a way to live? When you chase happiness, you're going to inevitably come through sadness, like, right? That's the comparable. If there's no sadness, there's no happiness. So then in that case, what are you chasing? So, like, life should be like a heartbeat. Like you want to have bad times.
Bad times are good because it makes for a more better happy times, so to say, you know, if you just if you didn't have either of those on the sense in the sense of a heartbeat, you're just flatlined, like you're just dead. You know, there's no exactly like the experience is really, truly what the most important part is, whether it's a bad experience or a good experience, everything really just is a learning experience.
Exactly. And our experiences, they need to happen in order for us to have a life, you know? And the thing is, when it comes to mental health and the way that it's portrayed today, it's like, you know, of course we have our body chemistry. We have these chemical imbalances in our head, but also. This era, we really look into our spirituality and how to be okay with things that we that are out of our control.
And finally breaking the stigma, finally about my feelings or I'm a man, so I can't struggle with whatever I'm struggling with or I'm a woman. I take medication, but I can't go to counseling or I can't talk about it because that would be considered as too emotional or anything like that. Like. We just finally I feel like we're in an era where we can break this issue of, wow, I can't believe that. I can't talk about what's going on inside my head.
What comes next. It's a good question. What do you think comes next?
What do I think comes next?
Let's get Bigbrain. Bigbrain. I feel. I feel like it'll be. Very heavily focused on our spirituality and, you know, kind of our outlook on life rather than our controllables, you know, just acceptance, really. Yeah, I think change is a big thing. Like things are always changing and people fight the change. And in a sense that's kind of what starts a lot of problems.
This may be very controversial, but do you Of using psychedelics. Do you remember the one video we watched a long time ago? We watched a video together. I think we watched it on on YouTube. This is maybe a couple of years ago. You showed it to me. I can't remember exactly what happened, but these group of people went on a trip. They went somewhere deep, far up into the mountains. And I think this was over. Oh, I know what.
You're talking about. Yeah, it was meant to Yeah, like a spiritual retreat. You know, like. Is that a medical retreat? I don't know, but that's what they called it.
Psychedelics are highly used in different And like, I mean, you have to you have to be on such a severe spectrum that they have decided that you're allowed to. But I think a decriminalization in allowing doctors to experiment with everything because it feels like now that we have structure, everything is like lawfully permitted to be like, you can't do this, you can't use this, you can't do that. But when it comes to mental health, you should have all doors open.
Because if all doors are not open, if without lobotomies, we wouldn't be here without drilling a hole into your head. We wouldn't be here without exorcisms. Like you can go back in time. And if you take these things out of time, we wouldn't have the treatments we do now. We wouldn't have cognitive behavioral therapy. Sigmund Freud may have never existed.
And so as much as we can sit here and complain about like, holy God, lobotomies were terrifying, I can't believe someone drilled a hole in their head to feel no pressure. It's an advancement.
And as much as I think mental health is going to continue to advance my biggest fear with mental health that it becomes mainstream and we lose the point of what mental health is, and it's making sure that people are okay, that they mentally are going to live their lives, whether it is with with depression or whatever disorder, but can live their lives normally and not be felt like they are truly insane.
So you're talking about from a treatment too much into the how do we treat this like something's wrong with them rather than like how, you know, how do how do we be okay with like, living life?
No, I think that we will lose the we will becomes mainstream, then everybody it's going to become commercial advertisements. It's going to become this paid sense of how.
It's how can we capitalize off of this and, But I think with everything that's been said, the power is with the people, with you, the listener and how we view our mental health.
And our goal here is to open up these lanes for future conversations to be had regarding mental health and kind of just opening your minds, accepting your reality and what you can and can't change, and just being willing to try new things as we learned in these different eras, it's they've been super experimental and in the end, maybe they were not the best. But as, as a race, as human beings, we always push the agenda to better ourselves. And I think that with each individual.
We can we can really bring about change in mental health. And if the word changes, fine, You know, if it goes mainstream, fine. But we always need to stick to our roots that are currently growing right now into these beautiful minds that you guys all have. We need to be one with each other. We need to take care of each other. We need to help each other out when we need to really practice your sense of humanity and just be open to making a better version of yourself on a day to day basis.
And with that, we just wanted to say please, If you haven't already, check us out on Instagram at YNA, Mental Health on Facebook, YNA, Mental Health. If you haven't gotten a chance to take a look at our merch, a lot of our merch gets donated to different mental health organizations.
And if you learned anything or have felt like we've helped you in some sort of way, we would really appreciate it if you could share the podcast with somebody else who may be struggling and doesn't know about us, and we truly greatly appreciate you listening and we can't thank you enough for supporting us, supporting our mission to getting mental health from putting holes in your head to being able to listen to other people's thoughts and emotions and feelings and be
able to comprehend them and give out your own emotions and thoughts. So again, we appreciate you and the world is a better place with you in it.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the
Goodbye. Thank you, everyone.
What's up, guys? Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're looking for more of our content and merch information, be sure to check us out at menshealth.com. Org. Keep an eye out for our skits and upcoming episode information. Feel free to reach out to us on IG or our DMS are always open and please remember you're not alone.