The age of unreason

There's still a great deal of stigma around any form of mental illness, even mild and transitory depression or anxiety. It's difficult, after centuries of declaring people "mad," to think that one can be mentally ill as one is ordinarily ill - with the mental equivalent of a cold or flu or allergies. I've had to help friends and family with this idea myself.

Yet people eagerly adopt monikers like claustrophobic and OCD, and admit to an irrational fear of heights or spiders. Depressed is a household word, but we are afraid to use its real meaning. It's a strange conundrum.

An interesting historical perspective on madness can be found in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," more specifically the introduction.

If you are really interested in this subject (how western societies treat the "insane" as the societies themselves evolve) I would recommend Michel Foucault's "Madness and Civilization", more recently published as "History of Madness". It's a very long book and I must confess I only got through about two thirds of it, but it certainly opened my eyes into how definitions of what it meant to be "sane" have changed over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_and_Civilization

The first reference at the bottom is: Baron-Cohen, Simon, “The essential difference: Male and female brains and the truth about autism” (2004)

He must hate Sasha.

Any chance to read the full article somehow?