One of the enlightening things that can happen as you work on your genealogy is the discovery of mental illness in your ancestors. I have several relatives that have different mental health conditions, and I sometimes wonder where that came from. Trying to understand how certain mental health disorders were passed from one ancestor to another isn’t always easy. There is added complexity every time the name for a particular condition is changed.
You may come across old names that were once used for certain mental health issues, that we no longer use today. Here is a quick list of some that you might have come across in your genealogy research:
The term “Mania” was used to refer to all kinds of insanity. Today, one might think that this term translates into Manic Depression, (which is now often called Bi-Polar). However, since “Mania” was used to describe a wide variety of things, one cannot be certain exactly what an ancestor who suffered from “Mania” would be diagnosed as today.
“Nervous Prostration” once was used to describe the condition of a person who was suffering from extreme exhaustion that was due to the inability of that person to control his or her physical and mental activities. I am not a physician or mental health practitioner, but I cannot help but wonder if the same disorder would be referred to as a “breakdown” today.
“Nostalgia” was once considered to be a mental health condition. Today, when we use the word nostalgia, we are referring to when a person thinks fondly of days gone by, or of their childhood. These memories can be evoked when a person sees an old object that looks a lot like one that they used to own. Today, we might call this same condition “homesickness”.
There were several words that once referred to a person who had Down’s Syndrome, or who had some kind of mental deficiency. Many of these words are impolite, not politically correct, or downright hurtful to our ears today. It is possible to come across the word “cretin”, “feeble minded”, “simpleton” , or “Mongolism”. It’s hard to imagine, but many of these words were considered to be proper medical terminology in the past.
The terms “amentia” and “dementia” have been used in the past to refer to a wide variety of mental illnesses. Amentia described a person who developed a mental disorder as a child, or early in life. Dementia was the term for a person who developed it later in life, as an adult.
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