How was schizophrenia discovered?
Schizophrenia is a mental health condition that is experienced by a number of people throughout the world. There are fewer diagnoses nowadays than in the past as we have learned of other neurological conditions that can better explain people’s behaviour. It is a condition that needs careful management, and sending your line managers and senior management team on Mental Health Training Courses like those available from https://www.tidaltraining.co.uk/mental-health-courses is a great way to teach them about the ways they can support team members who have a mental health condition.
Schizophrenia was a name first used by a Swiss psychiatrist called Eugen Bleuler back in 1908. It was used to describe a disconnect between personality, memory, perception and thinking. Bleuler first talked about this condition at a lecture in 1908 that was held in Berlin. At this psychiatric conference, he talked about the diagnosis and the symptoms linked to it. He later published a paper, in the same year, about the condition.
It is thought that schizophrenia existed in the past, much further back than 1908, but it was categorised as a cluster of conditions, and in most cases, people were just declared mad and would have been locked away in an institution where they would have lived their final days in isolation. Even further back in history, there is some thought that people may have been classed as possessed and exorcisms carried out in a bid to clear the individuals of the demons that were thought to be living inside them.