Insanity and its treatment in Islamic society

A description of the actual treatment of the insane in medieval Islamic society is a difficult task for three major reasons.First, the medical texts, especially the well-known treatise on insanity by Ishaq ibn 'Imran,2 give descriptions of various mental disturbances and their therapies; these accounts are, however, usually restricted to the Galenic tradition, are generally nonclinical, and do not emphasize psychoses or florid conditions.Like Islamic law, these accounts are prescriptive rather than descriptive, so that any historical survey of the medical treatment of the insane can rely on them only as supportive evidence or as the rationale for the practice of professional physicians.Second, historical descriptions of disturbed men and women are rare, and one must resort to a wide variety of sources, such as adab (belles-lettres), biographical dictionaries, geographers' and travellers' accounts.These depictions of unusual behaviour are, in fact, evaluative.Thus, the third issue is the serious methodological problem ofwhat is meant by "insanity" or "mental illness".3For convenience, insanity may be defined as any behaviour that is judged to be abnormal or extraordinary by a social group at a specific time and place.Within the wide spectrum of human behaviour, members ofany society set boundaries to what they believe to be acceptable or permissible.This judgement or consensus depends on the degree to which an individual's behaviour is disturbed as well as on the attitudes of his or her social group toward those actions.4Mental illness is, then, more intimately dependent on social attitudes and beliefs than physical illness, and this social context largely determines the care and treatment of the insane.