Hello. Hello.
Welcome back to Diagnosing a killer. I'm Koelle.
And I'm Kenna.
Welcome back to the Mental breakdown. We're here to swap some melody on you.
Oh, I'm excited.
I'm excited as well.
So, I decided to do five diagnoses that are not diagnosable anymore.
What?
Yeah.
That's cool.
I know that we talked about schizophrenia being a spectrum now and certain things like that.
So it was like, wouldn't it be kind of cool to look back into history and see what weirdness people have come up with to explain a way.
Interesting.
Mental illnesses.
I guarantee.
I hope that female hysteria is in there.
You would think.
We're actually going to start out with number one being male hysteria.
Ooh. Okay.
So I was on the right track.
Coming in at number one, Kung Fu Jizya.
Kung Fu Jizya.
So of course we've heard of female hysteria, which also was called the wandering womb at some point.
And it was thought to be connected to female sexuality, which is just another great way to suppress women in general.
Am I right?
Thanks, Freud.
Well, we'll get to that.
Actually, I'm glad that you said that.
It was not for a long time that men actually couldn't become hysterical because they lacked a uterus.
So in turn, psychologists actually suggested that the male form of hysteria was trauma-based or PTSD-based, which would become PTSD.
So not hysteria at all.
Like actual fucking reasoning to be like mentally healthy.
Yeah.
Women are crazy because of their dumb uteruses.
Yeah.
They're crazy because of actual things that have happened.
Okay, y'all.
War.
Like war.
So before PTSD was an official diagnosis, at the time it was called Railway Spine.
Whoa.
Right?
So this is a diagnosis that was actually given to traumatized victims of railway accidents.
Because people just, I guess, didn't realize, like, I guess train safety wasn't a thing.
I mean, that makes sense.
So it was either people that were like passengers that witnessed an accident or bystanders that witnessed accidents.
And so, but again, it was traumatic.
Yeah.
So this was the, you know, precursor to PTSD.
Total side note, I was reading through my treatment plan today because I got back in therapy, I told you.
And it literally says on there, diagnosed PTSD.
And I'm like, Q.
Q.
So it's official, y'all.
So my treatment plan is for generalizing anxiety disorder, but it literally says diagnosed PTSD.
I'm like, thanks.
But I just think that's so funny.
I'm like, it's not funny at all, but it's like, oh, I'm glad that it's something that I'm not like, I'm not actually crazy.
Like I actually have a real diagnosis.
So later, later doctors are actually coin, like, remove Railway Spine and would coin it war neurosis.
So it was because they would also notice that it was in military.
Yeah.
So doctors began to notice that hysterical symptoms were present in both men and women, but doctors knew hysteria couldn't be present in men.
So they turn again, like have the term for it, which was male traumatic hysteria.
Oh my God.
That reminds me of like on Grey's Anatomy when they say, I think it's Bailey.
She says, like, do you know what hysterical means?
She's like, it's code for non-male.
And I'm like, hell yeah.
So true.
Yeah, it really is.
It's like for women, it's like deal with it.
And for men, it's like, partime.
So eventually Freud would actually propose the idea that hysterical symptoms were present in men and women, and they were actually from the same cause.
Freud said it.
After he said women have a wandering uterus.
Right.
But that it's also possible.
He actually self-diagnosed himself and his brother with hysteria at one point to reverse the idea that hysteria was gender specific.
That just sounds like a try hard.
Well, that's like a celebrity being like, yeah, like I did this and that, even though they didn't just to get other people on board.
No, of course, yeah, exactly.
Mellere.
Isn't that intense?
So that's male hysteria.
That's wild.
Yeah, there is such thing as male hysteria.
It's just called PTSD now.
You heard it here first.
You heard it here.
Coming in at number two.
Number two.
The hot 100.
Forgive me because I might butcher this, but it's disease, theses, atheopica.
Very good.
Damn, right?
So this guy's Samuel Cartwright, right?
Like he's just a total ass hat.
So during the 1800s, a doctor by the name of Samuel A. Cartwright, he was a medical practitioner and a prophet.
Like he also dealt in psychological theories and medications and things like that, like psychiatry.
He was actually given awards many times during this, during his studies and things like that over time for scientific breakthroughs.
And he was actually really highly respected and recognized like nationwide.
But he was also part of this cute little snippet of history called scientific racism.
Right?
Cute.
So yeah, we know now the term is scientific racism.
So deseus thesia atheopica is a term coined by Cartwright and it was basically was the cause of quote laziness of slaves.
Atheopica is actually it's Greek terminology and it basically means I think it's north of the Nile or by the Nile.
Okay.
So it's a technical term for, or I guess like a geographical term.
Yes.
Some of the symptoms were where a person appeared to be half asleep and actually had a symptom that was insensitivity in the skin caused by raised lesions, mostly presenting on one's back.
Oh, that's really odd.
It's not odd.
You know, I wonder why they're exhausted and tired and acting quote unquote lazy because they're getting freaking beaten by assholes.
Oh my God, that is so like disgusting.
It's disgusting.
That was actually a term.
It gets worse.
So other doctors would not always support this theory to which Cartwright claimed it was because others quote attention had not been sufficiently directed to the maladies of the Negro race.
I'm sorry, come again.
Right.
Yeah, they just weren't paying enough attention.
Yeah.
Oh, so he's not wrong because he's trying to say that they're lazy.
Other doctors are wrong for not recognizing that they're lazy.
Yes, exactly.
That makes my stomach hurt.
According to Cartwright, this mental illness was quote unquote easily curable.
His theory was that the lesions on one's back or skin could be treated and therefore cure the disease.
Or just stop enslaving people and maybe that'll fucking quote unquote cure it.
Yeah.
Like, I'm sorry, I'm screaming into the microphone.
That is so infuriating.
How would you treat these lesions, you ask?
Oh, no.
Quote, the best means to stimulate the skin is first to have the patient well washed with warm water and soap, then to anoint all over an oil.
Slap the oil with a broad leather strap.
Shut up.
Not even kidding.
Then put the patient to some kind of hard work in the sunshine.
Shut the fuck up.
I'm not even kidding.
That's a lie.
That's what he recommended as far as treatment.
That is written down on a piece of paper in history.
Yes.
What a fucking cocksucker.
It's awful.
Isn't that horrible?
Oh, that's baffling.
After which, Cartwright would then go on to say that the slave would quote, look grateful and thankful to the white man whose compulsory power has restored his sensation and dispelled the mist that clouded his intellect, end quote.
Okay, I'm not like in favor of book burning, but fuck, burn this shit out of this content.
It's so infuriating.
What the fuck?
The fact that you even were able to find that in the internet because it still exists.
Oh, this is on the Wikipedia page.
Oh my God.
This is real.
That literally, I just, I can't.
It gets worse.
Oh my God.
He would also insist that the disease was quote, much more prevalent among free Negroes living in clusters by themselves than among slaves on our plantations.
It attacks only such slaves that live like free Negroes in regards to diet, drink and exercise, end quote.
So, I guess it's scientific racism.
It's there.
And what, like, and people just believe this shit, like, because they're dumb and they're ignorant and they want to remain ignorant.
I don't even think I have any extra words.
According to Cartwright, quote, nearly all free Negroes are more or less afflicted with it and have not got some white person to direct them and take care of them, end quote.
Because that was grammatically correct.
This diagnosis is not the first of its kind and it certainly wasn't the last in regards to scientific racism.
It would take another 80 years after Cartwright's death before scientific racism would be denounced, begin to be denounced.
And it was around the Second World War.
So, when, like, dad was born.
Like, that's not even that long ago.
Like, our grandfather fought in that war.
Isn't that incredible?
And that there's still people alive today that believe in shit like that.
Wild.
I just, it's the treatment plan that's getting me.
Oh, yeah.
That's the treatment for it.
That's the quote, unquote, treatment.
What are all these strange lesions?
Like, must be the source.
God.
Another, like, scientific racism thing that they thought for a long time was that black people had a very severe form of leprosy.
Yeah, I've heard that.
It's horrible.
It's awful.
That, like, makes me want to fucking cry.
Like, that is so awful.
Fuck that guy.
Rest in distress.
I wanted to do that one second because it's really intense to think about.
So we're going to move on to number three.
The Vapors.
We got the Vapors.
We're going to talk about the Vapors.
You've heard, I'm sure everybody's heard about the Vapors, right?
The Vapors.
And, uh, yeah, everybody's heard about it at least once or twice in their life, you know, because I say it every once in a while.
But I think I'm going to stop saying it.
It actually comes from the notion that internal organs, most often the uterus, would emit vapors that would rise up into your brain and cause chaos.
It sounds like hysteria.
It's the same thing.
It's just re-named it.
It is.
Well, it was another way we can go against the women.
Oh, the uterus.
God.
The Vapors.
I got the Vapors.
That's called pheromones and they're normal.
So this actually, there's more to it.
So this would range anywhere between, like, if you're going to talk about real diagnosis, bipolar disorder, anxiety, it would also, you know, the Vapors would also explain,
at the time, PMS, mania, depression, fainting, mood swings, and even withdrawal symptoms.
Okay, so all of those things you could cause by other things.
The Vapors.
Fainting is because, you know, PMS and fainting are two completely different.
You could have fainting from being too hot.
And withdrawal symptoms.
Like you're weaning yourself off of heroin, got the Vapors.
Yeah, literally.
Oh, you're a woman.
Okay, it looks like you got the Vapors.
So the Vapors would range between herbs, more sex, less sex, or purifying yourself with fire.
I'm sorry.
What was that last one?
I'll get there.
Do tell.
Either way, most often people were diagnosed as just becoming too, quote unquote, westernized too quickly.
So believe it or not, at a certain point in history, the spleen was actually thought to cause most similar afflictions psychologically.
I did hear that.
So mostly it was linked to melancholy or depression.
And in fact, the Greek word spleen means melancholy.
Or melancholia.
Yeah.
And so it was thought to think that the spleen was part of it, like, knew it was part of, like, the digestive system.
But they thought that it harbored black bile and that those would emit vapors or whatever.
Bro, I'm so glad I was here when I was.
No. So this would be at least for men because most vapors came from the uterus.
So of course they had to give it another name for men because men are so goddamn special.
Pat you on the back.
It was also thought that the spleen actually was the source of laughter causing madness.
And they're just grasping shots.
And since women have both a spleen and uterus, they're doubly bad.
Wicked.
So the spleen was actually thought to also produce evil if not treated and you could also cast spells with it.
Oh, so now we're witches.
Oh, circle.
And that's what I'm saying.
Kill it with fire.
That's what I'm saying.
That is scary.
They thought that the only way to get rid of it was through fire.
I'm sorry. Purification through fire is such a nice way of saying burn at the stake.
Oh, we just landed it.
The only treatment is purification through fire.
Burn at the stake.
Jesus.
Fuck that.
It's so awful.
Burn at the stake.
That's not funny at all.
It's sad.
It's terrible.
How primitive.
Oh my God.
That is so bad.
All right.
Number four.
Homosexuality.
Oh, here we go.
So, I mean, we all know that homosexuality is not a mental illness.
Tis not.
Tis not a mental illness.
And I'm sure everyone is aware that at some point it was considered a mental illness.
Yes.
But here's some interesting tidbits to think about.
In 1973, homosexuality was actually taken out of the DSM-5, which is 73.
Sounds like 50 years ago.
Right?
Like literally that was 50 years ago.
When that was thought of me was still illegal back then too.
Yeah.
When you were talking about Robert Brunella, that even when you know, you said that he
was, we went to college in the 60s or was in high school in the 60s or whatever it was.
And then it wouldn't be until like 13 years later.
Like it was considered a mental illness.
Well, yeah.
It reminds me of like, the Immunerapsity, like with Queen and stuff.
Like they were in like the late 70s, but still like it was a big deal even for Freddie Mercury
to kind of come into his own.
And he was famous.
He's got the vipers.
So, of course, the DSM-5 for listeners that might not know what that is, that is the Diagnostic
Encyclical Manual that provides pretty much a guideline for classification of mental disorders
and psychiatry.
And that is the American Psychiatric Association.
That creates that.
It's true.
Remember because Dr. Zimbardo was on the APA, Psychological Association.
Yeah, that great guy.
He's a great guy.
So ethically correct.
So the redaction stated, quote, homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgments,
stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, end quote.
Yeah.
And that this redaction aimed to, quote, take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness
that has long been associated with homosexual orientations, end quote.
With that, however, there is something that shifted socially.
Since it was no longer classified as a mental illness, society was like, so you choose this?
Yeah.
And it came with the stigmatization, basically, still, that it wasn't a mental illness.
Now, it's a choice.
Yeah.
And now you're choosing to be this way.
Yeah.
And it wasn't recognized anymore.
Since it was no longer classified as something that was diagnosable and therefore treatable,
society started villainizing the queer community, unfortunately.
So awful.
So instead, they're like, oh, well, you got to cover for a while, but now you're saying
to mind and you choose to be this way.
Maybe perhaps you're more crazy now.
Yeah.
You're not choosing this.
So then as a result of this, the community started seeing an increase in mental health
issues.
Yeah.
Like depression.
And anxiety.
Exactly.
And PTSD, which is really interesting, but now it's like, okay, it's not diagnosed as
homosexuality, but now you will have all of these real-
What's a co-occurrence?
Yeah.
These real things that happen to people in the community as a whole because of that,
which you want, of course, it's a good thing.
It's not a mental illness.
Yeah, absolutely.
But also, it's like, okay, because it's now, I would say decriminalized, if you will, or
it's now no longer a mental disorder, now people are more comfortable coming out as such,
and then therefore they are comfortable expressing their other internal thoughts and their anxiety,
depression, what have you.
So it's not only, okay, now I don't have to face the fear of being prosecuted or whatever
because-
Or put in asylum.
Exactly, because I feel that way.
So now I feel I could be more open about my other anxiety, depression, whatever I would
be dealing with on top of society's fear of then having queer people in the streets.
And how horrible that is, honestly, that they didn't care too much about it because queer
people were being put away as insane.
And that, but then after this comes out, it's like, they started policing their own streets
and then, and unfortunately the queer community got a lot of that backlash and stuff.
It's really sad.
It's awful.
And honestly, within the last few years, I looked it up earlier that actually rates
of suicide and depression and anxiety are actually going down in the queer community.
So I think it's definitely because society is shifting yet again.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's more like, I feel like especially now with the platforms that we have, it's so much
easier to connect with people that are going through something similar to you.
And it's hard, I mean, in any walks of life, it's hard to find people, if you're any sort
of, dare I say, different from anyone else, then it's like, especially back then, in the
70s and stuff, wouldn't have someone that you could call or match with.
Right, yeah.
You would have to have to go underground to a bar that accepted gay people or were gay-owned.
Exactly.
Yeah, great list of stuff, but also real controversial topics.
So we're going to end with number five, lunacy.
Okay, that sounds like something having to do with the moon.
Well, let's talk about it.
So we've heard the term lunatic to describe people who are crazed or presumed crazy, but
maybe you've never heard it described as this because sometimes people don't or haven't.
The term actually comes from the moon, like you said.
Oh, yeah.
So, Luna, let's see.
And it's actually the Latin, the original word is a Latin term, which was lunaticus,
which actually means to be moon-struck.
So in the 1700s, philosophers and doctors thought that the brain was the wettest organ
in the body, and much like tides tend to be affected by the moon, they assumed that people's
brains would change as well.
Just because they're both water-based?
I guess.
Another reason that one might experience lunacy and that is on full moons, people would be
disturbed by the bright light source and it would disrupt sleep patterns and cause crazed
episodes similar to what we now know is bipolar, seizures, and insomnia.
Oh, well, I mean, I can kind of get on board with some of that.
Like on a full moon, people do tend to act oddly.
However, I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that we know it's a full moon
and we're anticipating for the after full moon.
So it's like, you notice it more.
It's just like a similar lady you buy in a white car.
Now you see white cars everywhere because you have one or whatever.
Just for time's sake, I didn't include a lot of those.
There's a whole list of ones, even on the Wikipedia page for lunacy, or actually, I think
now it's called Lunar Effect.
And so if you just Wikipedia Lunar Effect, there's all these studies that they've done,
like they say like, oh, car crashes are higher or motorcycle, but they say that it's usually
because people are distracted and they're looking at the moon.
They're not paying attention what they're doing.
Well, it's also, have you seen that website about the weird correlations and stuff that
have nothing to do with each other, but for some reason they correlate?
Like the John Wilkes booth and the other guy?
I don't know.
I'm thinking of, like, one of the correlations on there is murder rates spike at the same
time as ice cream sales.
And it's because it's not having anything to do with each other.
It's just the fact that it's hot, so ice cream sales spike and then like anger spikes.
Like, I don't know.
There were some other ones like it did say, you know, epilepsy was more of a risk factor
on full moons just because of the light, but it has nothing to do with the fact that it's
actually the moon that's doing it.
Yeah, that's what they're trying to say.
Yeah, that, you know, the light reflects things off more, you know, and so if you're driving
at night, you know, the reflection might, and it might cause a seizure.
That makes sense.
Yeah, and like one of the other ones that like, it's so silly, the correlation that
you have to look, it's called, like, I just googled honestly like weird correlations,
but one of them is as the number of Nicholas Cage films that he appeared in goes up, so
did the number of people who drown in a swimming pool.
It's like, it has nothing to do with each other, but like they both go up at the same
time.
And down.
It's weirdly correlated.
It's so silly.
Oh, damn.
So silly.
He just had a movie come out too.
He did?
Oh no, swimming pools.
Sailing for swimming pools.
Oh, god.
That's ridiculous.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
No, thank you.
So, yeah, so again, you know, we now know that these things are bipolar disorder or maybe
schizophrenic episodes, things like that.
However, the people that are being most affected by those things are transient people.
People that sleep outside, people that are exposed to that.
And so is it that it's lunacy?
Or is it just people that are, yeah, people that are transient usually have mental health
issues.
So, you know, anyways, so the word lunacy has actually since been taken out of medical
journals and laws.
It actually wasn't until 2012 that President Obama would enforce the removal of the word
from any and all federal law publications.
Wow.
This law was called the 21st Century Language Act of 2012.
Because he's like, listen here, motherfuckers.
It's a 21st century.
It's actually like stupid asses because they're actually like lunatics.
Literally, like, that's, I did not know that.
That's so wild.
2012.
It was moved from our federal laws.
That was 10 years ago.
That's ridiculous.
That's crazy.
Ah, I said crazy.
Crazy.
That's lunacy.
That is wildly.
That is my list.
That's, that was a really good one.
I'm glad that you decided to do that.
I actually was catching myself like googling like interesting psychology topics or like,
you know, crazy, whatever to like start researching for the my next mental breakdown.
And I just couldn't land on something that was really, that was really cool.
It's outside the box.
It's a little bit different.
Well, I also, you know, again, like we, I don't, I didn't want to dwell too much on
the, not that it's not very real history, but things like homosexuality because we know
that homosexuality was illegal.
But to think, to think about the way that the community was affected, you know, that
the struggle was real.
It's not like it's like, oh, well, it's out of the DSM five is no longer a mental illness.
Now we don't have to worry about it.
No, like it had very real ramifications that the queer community really had to deal with.
But of course the one about the lesions on the backs of slaves and how the treat like
that's just cruel.
That is cruel.
And it's just, it's, you know.
So I definitely wanted to think about things that, you know, when you did scientific racism,
I mean, that was just like huge.
Honestly, something that I never really thought about.
And I think people should recognize as a very real thing.
Of course.
And I really do appreciate the fact that like you're coming on here, obviously, from an
educational standpoint, like, and I appreciate it that we can have these discussions on our
podcast and it's, it's, it's important, you know, it's a big deal.
It's not something that, and just because, again, like you said, it happened at the
past, oh, it's for past it, we're not, you know, past it.
It's still very prevalent today.
Yeah.
It's, it's really hard to talk about.
But the important thing is to have this conversation.
Right.
Of course.
Especially the same thing what we talk about with mental illness all the time.
Yeah.
We definitely want to create a safe platform for people to talk about anything that they
want to talk about everything.
So thank you guys for joining us.
Go out and vote.
Yeah, same.
We're on women, go out and vote.
Thank you guys for joining us for our mental breakdown.
We will be back with part two.
I'm excited to hear that second part.
And we will definitely be in touch if you guys want to reach out to us.
Gmail is diagnosing a killer at gmail.com, patreon.com.
We have an Instagram at diagnosing a killer and Twitter is at killer diagnosis.
Please reach out to us guys and give us your opinions or your suggestions, anything.
Yeah.
We have some of these letters following us that we don't know and we've not heard from
them.
We just have them following us on social media or they're on our Patreon and stuff.
So please reach out to us, we want to hear from you guys.
We won't send Bob's or Vigene though.
We definitely won't do that, so don't ask for that.
Alright, love you guys.
Love you guys.
Bye.