Psychology · Boston College
Mental illness and mental health, as diagnoses and as experiences, have not remained constant over time. Those who displayed unusual behaviors were once denounced as witches or locked up in asylums; now they are more likely to be considered differently neurologically wired or offered drugs or psychotherapy. Not only has the stigma attached to mental illness changed but the very categories themselves, the labels, and the behaviors associated with them, have come into existence or disappeared over time: hysteria is no more, while PTSD and anorexia nervosa are relatively recent arrivals. This cou
