Honors/The Mad Among Us: A Global History of Mental Disorder

Catalog description

Mental disorder is a universal and persistent condition in human history. Every society has struggled to make sense of it; every society has struggled to address it. But, what is mental disorder? Is it a disease? If so, of what? The body? The brain? The soul? Is it a chemical imbalance? Genetic destiny? Is it the wage of sin? The mark of the devil? The curse of a god? Or is it a social label or cultural construct - a name slapped on thought, feeling, or behavior that defies a society's definition of "normal?" This course seeks to answer these questions by exploring the great range of beliefs human societies, ancient to modern and from across the globe, have developed to identify and define mental disorder as well as the methods they have employed to treat or contain it.