10 psychiatric facts.

[Matthew X]

PSYCHIATRY IN THE AGE OF REASON (1750-1995): 10 FACTS

1. Black slaves who ran away from their "duties" were deemed by psychiatry 
to be mentally "ill". The psychiatric "illness" was known as "drapetomania".

2. Irascibility or impertinence on the part of a black slave was deemed by 
psychiatry to be a mental "illness". The psychiatric "condition" was known 
as "dysthaesia Aethiopica".

3. Psychiatrists were originally known in the 18th century as "alienists"; 
"mental patients" were originally known as "aliens".

4. Single mothers were once deemed by psychiatry to be "insane". As a 
result, single mothers were incarcerated for, in certain instances, a large 
number of years in psychiatric hospitals.

5. Girls who had sexual intercourse under the legal age of consent were 
once deemed by psychiatry to be mentally "ill".

6. Psychiatry in Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 1940's effectively killed 
more than 200,000 "mental patients" in the name of social and political 
progress.

7. Epilepsy was once regarded by psychiatric orthodoxy as a mental "illness".

8. In the communist Soviet Union, certain political dissidents were deemed 
by Russian psychiatry to be mentally "ill". These dissidents were 
incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals for their psychiatric condition.

9. Homosexuality was once regarded by western psychiatric orthodoxy as a 
mental "illness".

10. For psychiatric orthodoxy all voice hearing is a sign of "madness".