One of the reasons that the porphyria argument caught on is because it seemed to remove the supposed stigma of mental health issues from the Royal Family. Insanity and mental illness are behaviours not biological diseases.
Insanity can be caused by various things traumatic events such as abuse mental illness can be passed down by your genes and sometimes it just happens.
What causes insanity. Insanity itself is not recognized as a medical condition but there are a variety of disorders that could cause a person to become legally insane. Choice emotion mood and memory have their origin in the human spirit not the physical body or the brain. You will notice that historical causes of insanity differ drastically from what we know of the etiologies of mental disorders in the 21st century.
A brain tumor can cause a rapid dementia of the type Nietzsche had. A cultural history of insanity. Causes of Insanity An Address Delivered before the Norfolk Mass District Medical Society May 14th 1851 and Communicated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal NEJM.
Anything which tends to interfere with the nutrition of the brain may become a cause of insanity. A person can have a certain types brain tumor for decades without knowing it. Arterial-sclerosis a condition which restricted the flow of blood to the brain.
Devlin J ruled that for the purposes of the defence of insanity no distinction was to be drawn between. Drives an enemy target temporarily insane speeding its attacks by 50 and its movement by 80 as well as causing it to attack its own allies for 6 sec. That disease affects about one in 1 million Americans but it doesnt spread in the same way because no one is eating them.
Mental illness itself occurs from the interaction of multiple genes and other factors -- such as stress abuse or a traumatic event -- which can influence or trigger an illness in a. Disease and body chemicals do not cause choice emotion mood. The main development in ideas about causation was a change in the role of supernatural explanations and a growing preference for natural ones.
It was a sort of guide book for addicts who trying to overcome their disease and it warned its readers that insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results Narcotics Anonymous was trying to convince its members that continuing to use narcotic drugs and expecting to be able to stop on their own was folly. Frontal lobes involvement probably was the cause of his inability to resume writing and publishing. The survivors called the resulting illness kuru NPR says which translates to shivering or trembling and it could have started when someone in the village developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob and was eaten.
So too prevailing societal biases may mask the root cause of mad behavior. Take for example the witches in Salem Mass who shared a diet based on rye grain which in wet cold climates like that of 1692 grew a fungus that produced a natural hallucinogen like LSD. The causes of sanity included physical and emotional trauma bereavements and love heredity and alcohol.
Professor Scull who wrote Madness in Civilisation said the popular view in ancient cultures was that madness was caused by evil spirits. Among the special causes may be mentioned excessive mental exertion powerful emotions unrestrained passions sexual excesses disorders of the digestion the use of opium alcohol and tobacco general disorders of the system disease of the kidneys liver and other internal organs organic disease of the brain spinal cord. Daniel MNaghten the Scottish woodcutter for whom an insanity test still used in both British and American jurisdictions is named may have suffered from a psychotic disorder such as paranoid.
Causation insanity physical trauma. Patterson and his colleagues posited that physical causes of insanity were either direct afflictions such as brain hemorrhaging or lesions or indirect diseases such as suppression of the menses or pulmonary disease that in time damaged the central nervous system and eventually the brain. This chapter explores the causes of insanity.
Though todays modern world works off the historical aspects of mental illness causes a century ago or even longer clinicians were limited in their knowledge about mental disorders. This caused a temporary lapse of consciousness.