What is mental illness? In your answer, include the criteria that have been used throughout history to define mental illness.
The term 'mental illness' is derived from the scientific word 'psychopathology'. 'Psychic' means mind and 'pathology' means study of illness. This term is used to refer to a person's abnormal behavior that renders him different from other people of the society.
The illness can be acute or chronic and their activities might sometimes end up dangerous to others around them, or even to their own self. The degree of uncertainty and inconsistency in analyzing the inner self makes a person mentally ill.
There are many old age terms used to define mental illness, such as mad, lunatic, mania and insane. Each word refers to aberrant behavior but has slight differences in their meanings.
Madness is an emotional outburst of anger, sadness or joy, which is obnoxious or intolerable. Lunacy is a periodic madness, where people hang on to the same subject and find hard to deviate from dwelling on it, unless they succeed in what they want.
Insanity comes from the root word “sanus” which means unhurt or healthy. So insanity means hurt or unhealthy. Mania is obsessiveness towards something, which is hard to control. Out of all the terms, a maniac is considered a psychopath, who is aggressive and involves in violent activities.