4 things ancient Greeks and Romans got right about mental health

According to the World Health Organization, about 280 million people worldwide have depression and about one billion have a mental Health problem of any kind.

People living in the ancient world also had mental health problems. So, how did they deal with them?

As we'll see, some of their insights about mental Health are still relevant today, even though we might question some of their methods.

1. Our mental state is important

Mental health problems such as depression were familiar to people in the ancient world. Homer, the poet famous for the Iliad and Odyssey who lived around the eighth century B.C., apparently died after wasting away from depression.

Already in the late fifth century B.C., ancient Greek doctors recognized that our health partly depends on the state of our thoughts.

In the Epidemics, a medical text written in around 400 B.C., an anonymous doctor wrote that our habits about our thinking (as well as our Lifestyle, clothing and housing, physical activity and sex) are the main determinants of our Health.

2. Mental health problems can make us ill

Also writing in the Epidemics, an anonymous doctor described one of his patients, Parmeniscus, whose mental state became so bad he grew delirious, and eventually could not speak. He stayed in bed for 14 days before he was cured. We're not told how.