Obsolete terms for mental disorders

thumb| Physiognomy of the melancholic temperament (drawing by Thomas Holloway made for [[Johann Kaspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy, )]]

Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality, is a personality construct characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, persistent antisocial behavior, along with bold, disinhibited, and egocentric traits. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress, which create an outward appearance of normality.

thumb|The Idiot by Evert Larock (1892)

thumb|alt=refer to caption|An 1893 depiction of a woman with hysteria

Neurasthenia ( and () 'weak') is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist George Miller Beard reintroduced the concept in 1869.

thumb|upright|Samuel A. Cartwright (1793–1863) Drapetomania was a proposed mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Americans fleeing captivity. This hypothesis was based on the belief that slavery was such an improvement upon the lives of slaves that only those suffering from some form of mental illness would wish to escape.

mental disorder

type of trauma experienced in World War One

The term imbecile was once used by psychiatrists to denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal. The word arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. It originally referred to people of the second order in a former and discarded classification of intellectual disability, with a mental age of three to seven years and an IQ of 25–50, above "idiot" (IQ below 25) and below "moron" (IQ of 51–70). In the obsolete medical classification (ICD-9, 1977), these people were said to have "moderate mental retardation" or

term once used in psychiatry to denote mild intellectual disability

psychiatric diagnosis

In 19th-century psychiatry, monomania (from Greek , "one", and , meaning "madness" or "frenzy") was a form of partial insanity conceived as single psychological obsession in an otherwise sound mind.

thumb|Acedia, engraving by Hieronymus Wierix, 16th century

Hospitalism (or anaclitic depression in its sublethal form) was a pediatric diagnosis used in the 1930s to describe infants who wasted away while in a hospital. The symptoms could include decreased physical development and disruption of perceptual-motor skills and language. In the first half of the 20th century, hospitalism was discovered to be linked to social deprivation between an infant and its caregiver. The term was in use in 1945, but the term can be traced back as early as 1897.

obsolete medical term for schizophrenia

outdated diagnosis for patients with multiple symptoms of a neurological condition

personality disorder diagnosis involving sadism

proposed personality disorder in an earlier edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R) in 1987

thumb|alt=From The Women's Library: Suffrage Collection; Created by the Suffrage Atelier|A suffragist postcard depicting a lunatic, symbolized by a [[moon]] Lunatic is a term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".

alleged mental illness linked to scientific racism

Dromomania was a historical psychiatric diagnosis whose primary symptom was uncontrollable urge to walk or wander. Dromomania has also been referred to as traveling fugue. Non-clinically, the term has come to be used to describe a desire for frequent traveling or wanderlust.

mental disorder from the Middle Ages

historic mental disorder consisting of abnormal emotions and behaviours without psychosis

The term feeble-minded was used from the late 19th century in Europe, the United States, and Australasia for disorders later referred to as illnesses, deficiencies of the mind, and disabilities.

Oneirophrenia (from the Greek words "ὄνειρος" (oneiros, "dream") and "φρήν" (phrēn, "mind")) is a hallucinatory, dream-like state caused by several conditions such as prolonged sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, or drugs (such as the oneirogens ibogaine and harmaline). Oneirophrenia is often confused with an acute case of schizophrenia due to the onset of hallucinations. The severity of this condition can range from derealization to complete hallucinations and delusions. Oneirophrenia was described for the first time in the 1950s but was studied more in the 1960s. Although it is still cit

pejorative slur for one with a mental disability

Symptoms of passengers in rail accidents