[ticksoft]

I often wonder if mental illness is a side effect of this shift from outdoor and natural forms of work, to indoor and stress driven types of work.

People have to teach themselves all sorts of coping mechanisms to stop their minds going out of control with modern work (burnout being a vague example around here).

[iheartmemcache]

Like all things its nature vs nurture. There are plenty of historical accounts of people being anti-social agoraphobes or autistic in the past. They were either labeled 'eccentric' if they were rich or crazy if they weren't. "Demon possession" during bible days was likely a form of mental illness, and those who genuinely heard "God" might have either been on psychedelics or had genuine conditions (schizophrenia comes to mind).