Patient case notes for Victorian lunatic asylums generally contain an initial summary of information about the patient. In many, a ‘supposed cause’ is listed, some of which seem quite peculiar by modern psychiatric standards. The following are all causes to which a patient’s mental illness was attributed at the Melbourne asylum Yarra Bend during the 1880s.
- Attending Salvation Army
- Bad Temper
- Brooding over Pecuniary Losses
- Cold
- Conduct of Husband
- Desertion of a Man She Was Living With
- Disappointment in Love
- Excitement
- Family Trouble
- Fright from Fire
- Fright of Mother While Pregnant
- Habitual Drunkenness & Other Abuses
- Having Two Illegitimate Children
- Hysteria
- Ill-Treatment by Husband Who Is at Present in Gaol for Bigamy
- Jealousy
- Love
- Lunacy in Her Family
- Marrying a Man Who Had a Living Wife
- Mother’s Mind Affected When Pregnant with Patient
- Neglect
- Over Study
- Overwork as School Teacher
- Overwork in Her Husband’s Parish
- People Using the Expression “You Are Mad”
- Perhaps Drink
- Religion
- Residing in Too Heated a District
- Scandalous Report About Her Character
- Self-Abuse
- Sexual Excitement
- Softening of Brain
- Spiritualism
- Syphilis
- Trouble
- Uterine Troubles
- Want of Company
The rest of the causes can be found under the cut.
- Accident When Child
- Alcohol
- Alcoholism
- Anxiety
- Bereavement in Family
- Brain Disease
- Brain Fever
- Change of Life
- Confinement
- Congenital
- Constitutional
- Consumption
- Death of Brother
- Death of Child 9 Months Ago
- Death of Father
- Death of Husband
- Death of Husband & Only Daughter
- Death of Mother
- Domestic Affairs
- Domestic Troubles
- Drink
- Epilepsy
- Fall at Age of 6 Months
- Former Illness
- Fright
- Fright When Young
- General Debility
- Hereditary
- Ill Treatment
- Ill Treatment by Husband
- Intemperance
- Lactation
- Loss of Child
- Loss of Husband
- Love Affair
- Low Debility
- Menstrual Cessation
- Mental Anxiety
- Mental Labour
- Milk Fever
- Misfortune in Family
- Old Age
- Over Lactation
- Over Work
- Parturition
- Pregnancy
- Puerperal
- Puerperal Derangement
- Puerperal Fever
- Religious Excitement
- Rheumatic Fever
- Scarlet Fever
- Severe Attack of Illness
- Shock During Childbirth
- Shock from Stillbirth
- Sickness in Family
- Study
- Sudden Death of Daughter
- Sunstroke
- Want of Employment
- Worry
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