http://positivetranceformations.com.au/blog/nothing-new-under-the-sun/ People in the past did have problems with depression and anxiety disorder and panic attacks. However, they tended to call them by different names. The combination of anxiety disorder and panic attacks tended to be lumped together as hysteria.
2. Oddly enough, a lot of what we can learn
about depression in the past comes from
literature.
3. For some reason, a tendency towards
melancholy often seemed to be associated
with the ability to write well – it was part
of the poetic temperament.
4. Poet after poet wrote rather introspective
works about what it felt like to be in the
black depths of
melancholy or depression .
5. Perhaps we could take a leaf out of their
books and turn to journaling as a form of
self-expression and therapy.
6. The list of poets who seemed to suffer from
depression in some form or other (at least if
their poetic works are anything to go by)
reads like a list of the great authors of the
English language:
7. John Donne, John Milton, John Keats,
Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Gerald Manley
Hopkins and possibly even Samuel Coleridge
as well.
8. However, you don’t have to be as good a poet
as they were to benefit from getting your
feeling and thoughts out on paper.
9. The first major scientific work on
melancholy or depression was written in
1621 by the philosopher Richard
Burton.
10. his work’s full title was the rather
unwieldy “The Anatomy of
Melancholy: What it is, with all the
Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics &
the Several Cures of it,
11. in Three Partitions, with their Several
Sections, Numbers and Subsections,
Philosophically, Medicinally and Historically
Opened and Cut up”. We’ll call it the
Anatomy of Melancholy for short!
12. If you can handle the old-fashioned English and a
few bits and pieces of Latin (some of which are
translated), then you can read it for yourself at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-h/10800-h.htm .
13. This work investigates what we would call
depression, drawing on all branches of science
that were known at that time. It’s quite a
big work – you have been warned!
14. Some of the cures listed by Burton are quite
interesting.
15. In agreement with many modern thinkers, he
claims that diet can be used to treat
melancholy and (in his terms) balance out
the bodily humours .
16. Some of the things that he suggests as
suitable items of diet include chicken, mutton,
wheat bread, plain water, apples and
oranges,
17. which is all very well, but he has a huge
long list of forbidden foods that include a lot
that doctors today would consider to be very
healthy (cucumbers and cabbage, for
example).
18. He also suggested eating food in moderation
and in season, which today’s naturopaths
would agree with heartily.
19. Other cures include moderate exercise,
baths, fresh air and an active love life.
20. And the best sort of exercise, according to
Burton, is exercise that works the
mind as well as the body and is
fun to do.
21. Music is also recommended to ease a
troubled mind, whether you play it or listen
to it. All good advice!
22. He also states that “Whosoever… shall hope
to cure this malady in himself or any other,
must first rectify these passions and
perturbations of the mind: the chiefest cure
consists in them.
23. A quiet mind… is the only pleasure of the
world,” indicating that a troubled mind is one
of the biggest caused of depression (yes,
they knew that back in the 1600s!),
24. and suggests that people seek help by
getting rid of obsessive and negative thoughts
– which is precisely the sort of thing that
hypnosis and hypnotherapy try to do.
