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