A ‘Sisyphean Task’: Recent Developments in the Historiography of Mental Health

The World Health Organisation (WHO) calculated in 2019 that as many as 970 million people across the globe had a mental illness. 1 Despite its prominence today and its enduring presence throughout human history, leading scholars in the field acknowledge the immense challenges in researching the history of mental health.Borrowing lexicon from the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, whom the gods condemned to roll a heavy boulder to the top of a hill for all eternity, Andrew Scull described writing histories of mental illness as a 'Sisyphean task' . 2 Edward Shorter similarly labelled the history of psychiatry as 'a minefield' . 3 The challenges of writing such histories reflect the contentious nature of mental illness itself.Despite supposed advances in medical research, the mass production of psychopharmaceutical drugs and the increase in people undergoing therapy, contemporary societies remain uncertain about how to clearly demarcate an unhealthy mind from a healthy one. 4 There is no uncontested and universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes mental health and mental ill health.As British-based health sociologist Peter Morrall points out, for example, the National 1 These figures were taken from the World Health Organisation's website; https://www.who.int/health-topics/mental-health