Does Living In The Urban Environment Causes Mental Illness

23 Pages 5731 Words

Does the urban environment itself cause mental illness?
Mental illness has been present in the world as far back as biblical times, and stigma against the mentally ill has had a long and inglorious history in western civilization. For centuries, the mentally ill have had to suffer an unremitting cycle of exile, extermination, and inhumane confinement. They have had few advocates. Ignorance about brain illness has fueled the theory that mentally ill persons are demon-possessed. To our disgrace, even today there are those who still hold that belief and act on it. In the Middle Ages, a few enlightened centers of care, such as the community at Gheel in Belgium where a group of compassionate monks reached out, have provided support and caring to people suffering from mental disorders. The center at Gheel continues to offer foster care and asylum in 1993. But it is a notable exception. More prevalent practices have been to exile the mentally ill, burn them as witches, or set them adrift on overcrowded ships to wander between European ports. Pope Innocent VII authorized the extermination of witches in 1484, and a Dominican publication, the Malleus Maleficarum, detailed the recognizable behaviors of "witches." These behaviors would be clearly recognizable to any modern psychiatrist as the same symptoms of schizophrenia, manic-depression, and severe depression that are detailed in the present Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (Minkoff 32-36).
Within last years, more and more mental illnesses appear in the society, especially in the urban environment. Usually excessively stressful conditions of the urban life cause mental disorders. Why does that happen? Different theories explaining human emotion, thought, and behavior abound. Societies and mental health professionals continued to be puzzled about what constituted an appropriate approach to severely ill people whose behaviors and expressions frightened their neighbors. In eighteenth-century En...