ABSTRACT
The cultural and social background and restrictions on human behaviour have a far-reaching effect on mental health, and attitudes to those whose behaviour deviates from normal vary from society to society and from age to age. In the world of classical Greece the physicians of the Hippocratic tradition recognised the various forms of insanity and prescribed different regimes for the separate categories. Treatment included a good diet, exercise, music and occupational therapy, and, of course, the Aristotelian adjustment of the four humours by purging, emetics and blood-letting. As far as treatment was concerned there was little advance on this until the nineteenth century and, even then, Bethlem Hospital was still purging and blood-letting, having unfortunately forgotten the music, the exercise and the occupational therapy. However, in the intervening centuries the attitude to mental illness, as it was dominated by the different cultures and religious practices, went through many vicissitudes. Sometimes it was confused with sin, at other times it was regarded as proof of demonic possession, and there was a very narrow margin between what was considered to be the vision and ecstasy of a saint and what was thought to be contact with the devil.
