In the final episode of our "Mind Matters" series, we take an epic journey through time to understand how our perception of brain disorders has evolved. This historical narrative explains why modern stigma is a ghost of our past, rooted in centuries of fear and misinformation. We travel from the Ancient World, where holes were drilled in skulls to release demons, to the Middle Ages, with its witch hunts and the infamous "Bedlam" asylum. We explore the contradictions of the 19th Century, which gave us both humane "moral treatment" and the pseudoscience of phrenology. Finally, we chart the revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries: Freud's talking cure, the discovery of psychotropic medications, the creation of the DSM, and the dawn of neuroimaging that allows us to see the living brain. This is the story of humanity's quest to understand itself.
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