The Islamic Era and Mental Health

The Islamic Era and Mental Health

The Islamic Era and Mental Health

In the Holy Text (the Koran), the commonest term for the insane or psychotic is majnoon, also used five times in the Koran to ascribe how prophets were perceived.
 

In the common popular beliefs of the time, majnoon is used to describe the perceived eccentricity of all prophets when they attempt to guide their people to enlightenment. It is also used to refer to a magician or teacher.
 

Majnoon is derived from the word jinn (jinn in Arabic has a common origin with overlapping words with different connotations and can be traced to refer to a shelter, screen, shield, paradise, embryo andmadness). In Islam, “jinn” is a supernatural spirit that can assume both human and animal forms and can be either good or bad. Some jinn are believers: They obey the Koran. 

Further, Islam is not only for humans but also for the spiritual world at large. In the Koran, almost always, jinn and human beings appear together. This influenced the concept and the management of the insane, discouraging punitive measures or condemnation.
 

Positive attitudes to insanity may be seen in the link to being possessed, and also when the insane is perceived as innovative, original, creative, or attempting to find alternatives to a stagnant life style.
 

A similar view is notable in attitudes towardmystics, such as Sufis, where the expansion of self and consciousness has been taken as a rationale to label some of the Sufis as psychotic. The autobiographies of some Sufis reveal psychotic symptoms and much mental suffering on the path to self-salvation.
 

Another concept of mental illness is the consequence of disharmony or constriction of consciousness, to which nonbelievers are susceptible.
 

Denaturing our basic structure (Al Fitrah) and disruption of our harmonious existence by egoism, detachment or alienation, partly presented by loss of integrative insight.
 

Islam, like the Pharaonic papyri, saw body and psyche as a unity. The psyche (Elnafs) was mentioned 185 times in the Koran as a broad reference to human existence, meaning at different times body, behavior, affect and/or conduct (i.e., a total psychosomatic unity).
 

The prevailing attitude towardsmental illness at a particular stage in the Islamic world depended on
whether forces of enlightenment or deterioration of scholarly Islamic thought predominated. Periods of deterioration were characterized by negative views of the insane as being possessed by evil spirits, while during periods of enlightenment the disharmony concept prevailed.
 

The great Persian clinician, Rhazes (860-932 CE), had a profound influence on Arab as well as European medicine. The two most important books by Rhazes are Kitab al Mansuri and Kitab aI-Hawi. The first consisted of 10 chapters, including the definition and nature of temperaments, and a comprehensive guide to physiognomy. Kitab aI-Hawi was the greatest medical encyclopedia produced by a Moslem physician, translated into Latin in 1279 and published in 1486. It was the first clinical text to present the complaints, signs, differential diagnosis and the effective treatment of illness. One hundred years later, al-Qanun of Medicine by Avicenna (980-1037 CE) was a monumental, educational and scientific book with better classification.
 

The most famous hospital during this period was Kalaoon, built in Cairo by the Sultan al-Mansour in 1284 . By the 14th century, Kalaoon Hospital had sections for surgery, ophthalmology, medical and mental illnesses. Donations by the wealthy of Cairo maintained a high standard of medical care, including convalescence until they were gainfully occupied.
 

The care of mental patients in a general hospital and the involvement of the community in the welfare of the patients are innovations that foreshadowed modern trends by six centuries