Mental diseases: a public health problemMay, James Vance
Science
Mental diseases: a public health problem
May, James Vance
Mental health services; Psychology, Pathological
This is said to have been based on Jacobi's somato-aetiological
theory (1830) that "there is no disease of the mind existing as
such, but that insanity exists solely as the consequence of disease,
either functional or organic, in some parts of the body system."
Heinroth[137] saw in the various mental disorders a disturbance of one
or the other of the normal functions of the mind which he divided into
three classes. "If the cause of derangement is in relation to one of
these manifestations of mental existence—and to one or another it
must belong, since the mind is ever occupied with phenomena related
to one out of the three classes—we have only to inquire to which
modification the disorder actually refers itself, or whether it affects
the feelings, the understanding, or the will. Since one of these has
possession of our consciousness, or is at least predominant at every
point of time, whichever function of the mind happens to be that which
is falling into disorder, by it the form of insanity is determined."
Griesinger[138] in 1845, on the other hand, was of the opinion that
all classifications must in the end return to the principal forms
previously described—mania, melancholia and dementia. In 1860 Morel
announced his well-known classification: Hereditary Insanity, which
included imbecility and idiocy; Toxic Insanity (alcohol, lead, mercury,
etc., as well as cretinism); Insanity produced by the transformation
of other diseases (hysterical, epileptic, hypochondriacal); Idiopathic
Insanity (general paresis, etc.); Sympathetic Insanity, and Dementia,
"a terminative state."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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