Schizophrenia and hearing God or the Devil

[Diceroller]

When was the earliest case of schizophrenia reported in history? I was thinking was there schizophrenia before people found religion and started believing in God or the Devil? If so before God and theDevil existed to certain religions what did they say the voices were? This brings me to my final question. Is it possible that schizophrenia birthed religion due to the voices being heard percieved as other beings and then translated into good and bad God and the Devil?

[coli05anna00]

wow thats deep! who could possibly ever know that? it's like which came first, the chicken or the egg? People who have a strong religious belief dont necessarily have to have a mental illess, it just gives us hope in a sometimes very cruel world, a world with violence, mental illness and the cruellest of deseases.

[RATTER15]

I'm sure schizophrenia was around long before any religion, it is a medical complaint and nothing to do with any belief system.

I hate to think what the punishment would have been for suffering such a complaint.

[DTCwordfan]

easy one to answer - were you Neolithic or Mesolithic, that was the question across the transition.

[mibn2cweus]

Does believing that you are at once your own father, son and holy ghost qualify?

[jomifl]

schizophrenia cannot have existed before religion because according to the bible god did not create it, or if he did he forgot to mention it which is the same thing really.

[Old_Geezer]

That's a lot of questions for one post.

"When was the earliest case of schizophrenia reported in history?"
No idea, but I guess it wasn't a case of schizophrenia until the psychologists invented the name.

"was there schizophrenia before people found religion and started believing in God or the Devil?"
I'd assume the condition isn't brought on my something modern, so I guess folk suffered from the same disease back then

"what did they say the voices were?"
I haven't asked them. Maybe the thought processes weren't up to wondering then. A belief in non physical beings goes back a long way.

"Is it possible that schizophrenia birthed religion due to the voices"
Almost anything's possible. But I suspect a wonderment of how everything is as it is and why one experiences what one experiences wouldn't need mental illness to start.

[Lonnie]

I wouldn't call it schizophrenia, I'd call it Sunstroke, How long was Moses in the Desert before he heard the voice of God?, the same for Abraham and most of the Prophet of both the Old and New Testament, including Jesus when he was tempted.

[ladyalex]

Schizophrenia as a term for a particular set of symptoms was first coined in 1908. There were reports of various 'odd behaviours' long before then, but it was Bleuler who first described schizophrenia.
Theories on schizophrenia and its causes are many and varied from genetic to social to viral.
If you want an opinion, I'd say that religion was nothing to do with mental illness and all about power.

[petelebrown]

there were no famous people or "personalities" that voices rely on to impersonate in past times, perhaps because of this ever one was telepathic but when personalities came who did not want telepathy with common man it went underground and kind of messed up.