The psychiatric nurse is reflecting on the treatment and care of the mentally ill throughout history. Which of the following philosophical beliefs most guided treatment of the mentally ill during 17th century Europe?

Question

1. The mentally ill were divinely inspired and should be treated with care and benevolence.
2. The body's humors were responsible; blood, bile, and phlegm must be balanced.
3. Madness was best overcome by discipline and brutality.
4. The mentally ill were possessed by evil spirits that inflicted emotional suffering.

Answer 1

3
Rationale: Seventeenth century Europe operated under the belief that madness was less than ever linked to medicine and could be overcome only by discipline and brutality. Seventeenth century society created houses of confinement where, for the entertainment of onlookers, mad persons were publicly beaten and tortured. The belief that the mentally ill were divinely inspired and thus treated with care and benevolence was held by the early Arab world. Preliterate cultures attributed mental illness to superhuman, evil spirits that inflicted pain and suffering; no distinction between medicine, magic, and religion. Hippocrates was one of the first to link mental illness with medicine suggesting an imbalance within the body's humors, but not in the 17th century.