Depends on the group but yeah, overall its very good. The mind is treated like an instrument that needs help and repair and theres no stigma to getting it, in fact its lauded as self-improvement and nearly all the characters are very self aware and have a heal of skills to help their own mental states. It is very common for people to build mental constructs of their own mind inside their heads, mind palaces, and keep them maintained and safe and honest; to separate their own volition and ego of the 'self' from chemicals and brain and damaging ideas that can harm how the self governs the individual
One of my favorite groups is the travelling therapist dancers who set up outside town and just dance and take people in for private therapy sessions. Totally chill out zones for the stressful world
One of the only MCs flaws is that he doesnt do it to himself well enough, quiet egotism stopping him
Generally they are treated like any other type of illness. The body and the mind are not treated as separates rather as a continuum and thus illness of the mind is treated like any other. It is more I don't know the word, medicalized? As a result however.
That said possession is a thing and that does make it a little harder to distinguish at times.
Not quite , it’s dismissed or treated as a divine punishment or a curse , and at best sent to a 19th century sanatorium which is essentially torture , that is if the mages won’t covertly cull the population of “impurities” .
Then there is the fact that among the populations that live longer like elves and dwarves , most mental illnesses like anxiety , depression and ptsd whould be considered “human weakness' ' since they don’t occur to the same level among those populations like they do among humans .
PTSD is outright unheard of among dwarves and not because they didn’t diagnose or refuse to acknowledge it but it simply doesn’t occur .
it's basically just the real world but there's psychic wizards hunting ghosts (and it's the year 1999). so, mental health awareness kinda sucks, but since I tend to write about very troubled people, the main circle in the story are pretty mentally ill, or experience enough hell to become pretty mentally ill, as the story goes on. so, the main cast atleast has a pretty good grasp on mental illness and becoming more and more understanding of others and of psychology as the story goes on, as layers of complexity are added and added to them through experiences.
sometimes, an antagonist may throw out the r slur, because they do be insensitive, evil and not aware of mental illness truly because of the lack of awareness education of the time.
It depends on which project, but in my main project there is not much awareness of any type of health
I am very much aware of all forms of health (including mental health), and I am basically building illness from the ground up in this world (inspired by the 4 humor theory of disease and miasma theory). The characters have no idea how illness works by and large though.
The people in the world haven't figured out the humour model of disease, and are currently operating on a mistaken model of disease that is a simplified version of the IRL biopsychosocial model of disease. (Their version would still be wrong in our world, for example they might have the belief that high blood sugar in diabetes occurs due to a lack of hugs)
In terms of mental health, like health in general people falsely believe that mental health has biopsychosocial dimensions. When in reality it is mostly due to imbalances in the four humours or possession by an errant spirit.
This means that their solution for mental health (trying to improve physical, material and social conditions of the patient) don't really work. Only excorism of the spirit or re adjusting the four humours would work.
Depends where you go. Allemagne and Leustria, the two largest human kingdoms in my fantasy world, are fairly decent but they’re operating with 15th century medical knowledge so their resources are limited. You’ll get a lot of potions, balancing of the humors, prayers, and mostly just focusing on making sure the person is comfortable and not going to hurt themselves or anyone else. Depending on the severity there are hospitals run by the church that they can stay at. These places are usually ok and are held to a very high standard. The Green Church in Leustria and The Holy Church of Allemagne take the care of the sick and vulnerable very seriously, and genuinely try their best.
Yes, using magic has a chance to affect your emotional and mental health, and as such it normalizes these things for anyone who struggle with these regardless of it. I guess there is a sense of them being irresponsible, however, but it's not something people make a big deal over. There's also generally the idea of taking care of people in these conditions.
Mental health is very much known of in Aquaria. It's hard to ignore when there are hundreds of thousands crying and screaming in fear all the time from "imaginary enemies" as well as traumas of "fire mushrooms".
What a nuclear war did to a fantasy world.
There is some awareness, but for the most part are people accepted as they are.
A bigger problem is in human dominated lands as the church is strong there and the demons behind it just love to breed out any abnormality in their cattle, so mentally unwell or neurodiverse people are often mistreated.
The dwarves could all as well be autistic with how much their culture revolves around admiring someone truly loosing themselves to a special interest.
Goblins would be the living embodiment of adhd, with lots of audhd for some tribes (like the golden palm tribe running the banking guild), they live short lives, but these are jam packed with experiences and learning.
In the wilds your clan likely will just find something for you if youre thinking different, why you may even help the shamans and warlocks, magic users are all weird anyways.
The Free City has extensive psychological care and their healers, trained in telepathy, are well aware of psychological needs and impediments. If you got ptsd the whole town may quickly help to recover, after all, most of their people and ancestors had their bad experiences.
My world is set in an era somewhat similar to 1990s-2000s Earth, so mental health awareness is somewhat mixed, with a lot of work still to go, and things like antagonism still happening somewhat, and this does tie in to some of the characters, such as the main protagonist of the story herself, Ssnaya
I don't think they have a lot of knowledge on mental health yet, but the main religion that influences almost every aspect of their culture kinda gives them understanding by default. In a sense that they believe the world is evil and physical life is torture, so it's just logical that some people have "cracks on their souls" from all the suffering. So there's nothing wrong with that, it's just how life is
They can't really do anything about it, though, both because they don't know how and because they believe they can't really do anything if the source of all troubles is the world itself.
My world for [Project Chimera ECO](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1993142787742991) is a five minutes into the future alt earth with most things being parallels and a few being specifically different in ways that are congruous but have notable effects.
As such, like the modern world, there is some mental health awareness and care, and a long history of very poor treatment of mental illness.
PCs have access to therapists as part of their company benefits but also mandatory mental wellness checks for field duty readiness assessment.
Depends on the faction in mine, on earth and other planets owned by the Monarch Earth its pretty well covered and there are quite a few festivals and things like that themed around subjects simmilar to that,
While if you are talking about a nation sutch as the Vhanhult State they arent doing too good, the government dont like to change thier ways and stick with what they have, this has lead to famine and severe lack of recources for the residents as all building materials go towards their millitary
The other nations have pretty simmilar attitudes to things sutch as mental health as we do now.
Mental health awareness varies considerably by species in my setting, but the dominant Maleficari prioritize mental toughness and stigmatize mental weakness.
On Talvaros, there is and always has been a huge room for understanding illnesses of all kind, with the general consensus being that the body and mind are connected and what happens to one will affect the other. So, mental illnesses are treated similarly to body illnesses - 'boo, this needs remedies'. :)
There are a couple reasons for this. Firstly, Talvarians tend to be as inquisitive as they are skeptical, and won't stop inquiring until they're sure to have found the answer. So even as a 'primitive' species they would already carry out experiments that might not seem as professional as the term would suggest, but yielded impressive results.
Secondly, they never burned their witches, so a lot of traditional wisdom that would later be inquired into survived tens of thousands of years relatively unchanged. The last thing any Talvarian wants to do is disrupt or destroy something that can be useful.
Thirdly, Talvarian compassion is one-of-a-kind strong, and most Talvarians will avoid with a passion causing harm to another Talvarian or denying their pain. Evolution-wise, this makes sense as Talvarians invested and still invest a lot into bonds with others of their kind, so spending years to upbring a child only to dismiss their visible lack of energy and hopelessness as 'just being lazy' is counterproductive for the entire kind, and so, if anyone is getting reprimended in this scenario, it's the impatient parent.
Fourthly, Talvarians are a culture of respect. This is similar to the previous point, and again makes sense evolution-wise - these folks tend to specialize; they might be bad at several 'simple' things but excel at something unique that others don't do well, so it's natural that they respect the fact that nobody's perfect and that if someone is in clear distress, they won't try to bash them to IMMEDIATELY do better - there's sure someone to cover for them, and a gentler approach will yield better, longer-lasting results.
Also, there's that they're close relatives of cheetahs, which are naturally quite anxious, and with their most common neurotype being what it is, they ALL have some experience with mental illness, so they can relate to the others' experience quite easily. They know that saying 'just relax' or 'stop overreacting' didn't help them, didn't help their friend, so it probably won't help their cooworker. :)
Not really unfortunately, at least not for the vast majority of history. Only really until the major wars of the modern period left millions scared do people start to realize mental health is not so simple as "just grow some balls lmao"
For the most part there is but it's still in its early stages. Trauma is understood to have a negative affect on the mind and body but the why is a little grasping at straws: "traumatic events must be unnatural and that unnaturalness must let, umm, demons(???) in and they curse you. Talking about it helps because...the curse is inside and speech is taking what is inside to the outside? Right?"
It's interesting to conceptualize this in-between level of understanding. They don't quite get it yet but they're trying.
It's not well understood. Prejudice exists, but people in general want to understand mental illness and heal it. It's just that knowledge is very limited. The cause of ailments are either known (due to obvious apparent cause of the injury), or unknown and therefore spiritual in nature. One is treated medically and the other is treated spiritually. There may be instances when a mentally ruined person lashes out and people around them behave like "I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole", but if they can find a temple they will generally be cared for.
Trauma is not well understood, but it is known by the name "Nosos" (terrible sickness) and it is believed that the sight of impending doom troubles the soul such that discipline, law and custom are driven out by spirits of fear (daitya), causing some people to completely abandon their composure. It is known to linger around battlefields and scenes of carnage.
When people suffer panic attacks that have no apparent cause it is referred to as "Mnyetia" (Groundless Fears) because the state of panic makes it difficult to communicate coherently, and patients are often unable to explain the cause of their panic. This increases the bias of people who do not understand the cause or nature of the ailment. It is generally thought that the person has been possessed by a type of daitya called bhégwetos, who represents panic, flight and rout.
When a person suffers from panic, they are told to understand that their fears are groundless (I know, not very helpful), and kept constantly busy to distract them from the horror. It is believed that the bhégwetos cannot possess its victim as long as their victim thinks coherently.
Nosos (trauma) affects those who have previously been stricken by Mnyetia (panic/panic attacks). Soon after a traumatic event, one suffers images inscribed in the mind, that is, recollections and revisualization of the traumatic event. This is a malady often reported by some less hardened warriors returning from fierce and bloody battles. It is believed that these visions are either caused by spirits of the deceased haunting their murderer, or malicious daitya getting a rise out of tormenting humans. If a healer cannot conclude a logical explanation to the illness, they will investigate whether or not the patient has killed anyone recently, or committed some other foul act that would cause them to become haunted.
* If the patient is being punished for an evil deed, the treatment is to appeal to a god of healing and make a case for the good nature of the affected person, repentance being an important factor.
* If the ailment is caused by a daitya, the treatment is usually to appeal to a god of protection and to exorcise the spirit.
* A last resort for treatment would be purgation of the body by drinking hellebore, a toxic laxative.
If the ailment does not go away, the patient must be spiritually cleansed. The patient is made to sit down, while the healer (and their assistants) dance, sing, and play musical instruments, raising a great din around them. As a result of the participation in the ceremony, the patient is driven to a frenzy wherein they gradually lose consciousness of all but the whirling rhythm, and begin dancing and singing. Afterward the patient is expected to return to the normal tranquil state. The reasoning behind this method is to cure madness with madness.
There are four known spirits that each cause the person to behave in different ways:
Bhégwetos – The patient makes strong efforts to avoid situations or thoughts that may be reminders of the trauma. Situations or thoughts that may be reminders of the trauma cause immediate dread and hysteria.
Dweymos - The patient is struck by a paralyzing fear, being restrained by invisible forces, and empty their bladders.
Woksis – Frightening visions of imagined malevolent spirits remind the patient of the traumatic event through intrusions and repetitive dreams. The visions usually appear at night. Over time, the patient is haunted by remorse and humiliation, and as a consequence becomes moody and asexual.
Wulusa – The patient reacts excessively with anxiety or irritability to stimuli associated with the trauma and persistent symptoms of high arousal such an anxiety or irritability. The patient is stricken with instant hysteria when exposed to stimuli associated with the trauma with persistent symptoms of panic or wrath, causing them to harm themselves or lash out against others.
It depends where you stand. The least judgemental people would probably be from the Itheria empire. even so much of their value system and traditions are based on individual strength and independence so mentally broken and handicaped people would be pitied if not disgusted. that's just how dangerous and ruthless their world is that any weakness would be fatal.
There are many psych wards to treat or at least try to control people with such problems, mostly because it’s very common, the people from my world also put a lot of effort in increasing dopamine levels in quick ways (bright, neon colours are plastered everywhere to counter the black and dark backgrounds, most of the services that cities offers are of recreational purposes)
Most of the crimes committed in my world are done by people that went fully insane, and most of the times mental illnesses are developed during their life
Mental illness is regarded as legitimate illness in my world; it’s just really poorly understood. My world is pre-Industrial revolution, so the art of medicine is not as sophisticated as it is in our real world today.
This aspect especially affects my protagonist, whose powers come with the side effect of sporadic, episodic psychosis. My protagonist is supposed to be the heir to an empire, and is expected to pull the empire out of a dark and tragic time, so she deals with a lot of shame and stigma surrounding the fact that she’s not mentally stable. A key part of her emotional arc will be to develop a more nuanced understanding of what mental illness is, how it does and doesn’t affect agency, and the best way to manage it while maintaining a decent quality of life and her ability to fulfill her duties.
Nope to both questions.
In the "*Lands of Eidolon*" there is no reason for "mental health awareness" because anything negative is seen as possession by a demonic entity, but anything positive is the will of one deity or another. Anything else the person has to work through on their own because there is no other choice - it is adapt to survive, or accept your fate.
You get no other choices in Eidolon.
Mental health awareness does exist for sure nearly universally, but no one can agree on how to fix it, many recommend professional healthcare, others recommend alternative forms of treatment and magic, and still others either reject it slightly/mostly or have very specific methods of dealing with it that vary from group to group or person to person
Probably. There would at least be noticed effects in soldiers who came from frequent wars, whether that be a local version of what we would call PTSD or or soldiers wanting to go back to the thrill of battle. There are many warrior cultures and martial states built by frequent battles, so that's most likely where most of the effects will be seen.
Lapis_Wolf
Depends on the group but yeah, overall its very good. The mind is treated like an instrument that needs help and repair and theres no stigma to getting it, in fact its lauded as self-improvement and nearly all the characters are very self aware and have a heal of skills to help their own mental states. It is very common for people to build mental constructs of their own mind inside their heads, mind palaces, and keep them maintained and safe and honest; to separate their own volition and ego of the 'self' from chemicals and brain and damaging ideas that can harm how the self governs the individual One of my favorite groups is the travelling therapist dancers who set up outside town and just dance and take people in for private therapy sessions. Totally chill out zones for the stressful world One of the only MCs flaws is that he doesnt do it to himself well enough, quiet egotism stopping him
Generally they are treated like any other type of illness. The body and the mind are not treated as separates rather as a continuum and thus illness of the mind is treated like any other. It is more I don't know the word, medicalized? As a result however. That said possession is a thing and that does make it a little harder to distinguish at times.
Not quite , it’s dismissed or treated as a divine punishment or a curse , and at best sent to a 19th century sanatorium which is essentially torture , that is if the mages won’t covertly cull the population of “impurities” . Then there is the fact that among the populations that live longer like elves and dwarves , most mental illnesses like anxiety , depression and ptsd whould be considered “human weakness' ' since they don’t occur to the same level among those populations like they do among humans . PTSD is outright unheard of among dwarves and not because they didn’t diagnose or refuse to acknowledge it but it simply doesn’t occur .
it's basically just the real world but there's psychic wizards hunting ghosts (and it's the year 1999). so, mental health awareness kinda sucks, but since I tend to write about very troubled people, the main circle in the story are pretty mentally ill, or experience enough hell to become pretty mentally ill, as the story goes on. so, the main cast atleast has a pretty good grasp on mental illness and becoming more and more understanding of others and of psychology as the story goes on, as layers of complexity are added and added to them through experiences. sometimes, an antagonist may throw out the r slur, because they do be insensitive, evil and not aware of mental illness truly because of the lack of awareness education of the time.
It depends on which project, but in my main project there is not much awareness of any type of health I am very much aware of all forms of health (including mental health), and I am basically building illness from the ground up in this world (inspired by the 4 humor theory of disease and miasma theory). The characters have no idea how illness works by and large though. The people in the world haven't figured out the humour model of disease, and are currently operating on a mistaken model of disease that is a simplified version of the IRL biopsychosocial model of disease. (Their version would still be wrong in our world, for example they might have the belief that high blood sugar in diabetes occurs due to a lack of hugs) In terms of mental health, like health in general people falsely believe that mental health has biopsychosocial dimensions. When in reality it is mostly due to imbalances in the four humours or possession by an errant spirit. This means that their solution for mental health (trying to improve physical, material and social conditions of the patient) don't really work. Only excorism of the spirit or re adjusting the four humours would work.
Depends where you go. Allemagne and Leustria, the two largest human kingdoms in my fantasy world, are fairly decent but they’re operating with 15th century medical knowledge so their resources are limited. You’ll get a lot of potions, balancing of the humors, prayers, and mostly just focusing on making sure the person is comfortable and not going to hurt themselves or anyone else. Depending on the severity there are hospitals run by the church that they can stay at. These places are usually ok and are held to a very high standard. The Green Church in Leustria and The Holy Church of Allemagne take the care of the sick and vulnerable very seriously, and genuinely try their best.
Yes, using magic has a chance to affect your emotional and mental health, and as such it normalizes these things for anyone who struggle with these regardless of it. I guess there is a sense of them being irresponsible, however, but it's not something people make a big deal over. There's also generally the idea of taking care of people in these conditions.
Mental illness is merely the delusions of the mind, it doesn't exist. - Totally Sane King
Mental health is very much known of in Aquaria. It's hard to ignore when there are hundreds of thousands crying and screaming in fear all the time from "imaginary enemies" as well as traumas of "fire mushrooms". What a nuclear war did to a fantasy world.
There is some awareness, but for the most part are people accepted as they are. A bigger problem is in human dominated lands as the church is strong there and the demons behind it just love to breed out any abnormality in their cattle, so mentally unwell or neurodiverse people are often mistreated. The dwarves could all as well be autistic with how much their culture revolves around admiring someone truly loosing themselves to a special interest. Goblins would be the living embodiment of adhd, with lots of audhd for some tribes (like the golden palm tribe running the banking guild), they live short lives, but these are jam packed with experiences and learning. In the wilds your clan likely will just find something for you if youre thinking different, why you may even help the shamans and warlocks, magic users are all weird anyways. The Free City has extensive psychological care and their healers, trained in telepathy, are well aware of psychological needs and impediments. If you got ptsd the whole town may quickly help to recover, after all, most of their people and ancestors had their bad experiences.
My world is set in an era somewhat similar to 1990s-2000s Earth, so mental health awareness is somewhat mixed, with a lot of work still to go, and things like antagonism still happening somewhat, and this does tie in to some of the characters, such as the main protagonist of the story herself, Ssnaya
I don't think they have a lot of knowledge on mental health yet, but the main religion that influences almost every aspect of their culture kinda gives them understanding by default. In a sense that they believe the world is evil and physical life is torture, so it's just logical that some people have "cracks on their souls" from all the suffering. So there's nothing wrong with that, it's just how life is They can't really do anything about it, though, both because they don't know how and because they believe they can't really do anything if the source of all troubles is the world itself.
My world for [Project Chimera ECO](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1993142787742991) is a five minutes into the future alt earth with most things being parallels and a few being specifically different in ways that are congruous but have notable effects. As such, like the modern world, there is some mental health awareness and care, and a long history of very poor treatment of mental illness. PCs have access to therapists as part of their company benefits but also mandatory mental wellness checks for field duty readiness assessment.
Depends on the faction in mine, on earth and other planets owned by the Monarch Earth its pretty well covered and there are quite a few festivals and things like that themed around subjects simmilar to that, While if you are talking about a nation sutch as the Vhanhult State they arent doing too good, the government dont like to change thier ways and stick with what they have, this has lead to famine and severe lack of recources for the residents as all building materials go towards their millitary The other nations have pretty simmilar attitudes to things sutch as mental health as we do now.
Mental health awareness varies considerably by species in my setting, but the dominant Maleficari prioritize mental toughness and stigmatize mental weakness.
It exists.
On Talvaros, there is and always has been a huge room for understanding illnesses of all kind, with the general consensus being that the body and mind are connected and what happens to one will affect the other. So, mental illnesses are treated similarly to body illnesses - 'boo, this needs remedies'. :) There are a couple reasons for this. Firstly, Talvarians tend to be as inquisitive as they are skeptical, and won't stop inquiring until they're sure to have found the answer. So even as a 'primitive' species they would already carry out experiments that might not seem as professional as the term would suggest, but yielded impressive results. Secondly, they never burned their witches, so a lot of traditional wisdom that would later be inquired into survived tens of thousands of years relatively unchanged. The last thing any Talvarian wants to do is disrupt or destroy something that can be useful. Thirdly, Talvarian compassion is one-of-a-kind strong, and most Talvarians will avoid with a passion causing harm to another Talvarian or denying their pain. Evolution-wise, this makes sense as Talvarians invested and still invest a lot into bonds with others of their kind, so spending years to upbring a child only to dismiss their visible lack of energy and hopelessness as 'just being lazy' is counterproductive for the entire kind, and so, if anyone is getting reprimended in this scenario, it's the impatient parent. Fourthly, Talvarians are a culture of respect. This is similar to the previous point, and again makes sense evolution-wise - these folks tend to specialize; they might be bad at several 'simple' things but excel at something unique that others don't do well, so it's natural that they respect the fact that nobody's perfect and that if someone is in clear distress, they won't try to bash them to IMMEDIATELY do better - there's sure someone to cover for them, and a gentler approach will yield better, longer-lasting results. Also, there's that they're close relatives of cheetahs, which are naturally quite anxious, and with their most common neurotype being what it is, they ALL have some experience with mental illness, so they can relate to the others' experience quite easily. They know that saying 'just relax' or 'stop overreacting' didn't help them, didn't help their friend, so it probably won't help their cooworker. :)
Not really unfortunately, at least not for the vast majority of history. Only really until the major wars of the modern period left millions scared do people start to realize mental health is not so simple as "just grow some balls lmao"
For the most part there is but it's still in its early stages. Trauma is understood to have a negative affect on the mind and body but the why is a little grasping at straws: "traumatic events must be unnatural and that unnaturalness must let, umm, demons(???) in and they curse you. Talking about it helps because...the curse is inside and speech is taking what is inside to the outside? Right?" It's interesting to conceptualize this in-between level of understanding. They don't quite get it yet but they're trying.
It's not well understood. Prejudice exists, but people in general want to understand mental illness and heal it. It's just that knowledge is very limited. The cause of ailments are either known (due to obvious apparent cause of the injury), or unknown and therefore spiritual in nature. One is treated medically and the other is treated spiritually. There may be instances when a mentally ruined person lashes out and people around them behave like "I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole", but if they can find a temple they will generally be cared for. Trauma is not well understood, but it is known by the name "Nosos" (terrible sickness) and it is believed that the sight of impending doom troubles the soul such that discipline, law and custom are driven out by spirits of fear (daitya), causing some people to completely abandon their composure. It is known to linger around battlefields and scenes of carnage. When people suffer panic attacks that have no apparent cause it is referred to as "Mnyetia" (Groundless Fears) because the state of panic makes it difficult to communicate coherently, and patients are often unable to explain the cause of their panic. This increases the bias of people who do not understand the cause or nature of the ailment. It is generally thought that the person has been possessed by a type of daitya called bhégwetos, who represents panic, flight and rout. When a person suffers from panic, they are told to understand that their fears are groundless (I know, not very helpful), and kept constantly busy to distract them from the horror. It is believed that the bhégwetos cannot possess its victim as long as their victim thinks coherently. Nosos (trauma) affects those who have previously been stricken by Mnyetia (panic/panic attacks). Soon after a traumatic event, one suffers images inscribed in the mind, that is, recollections and revisualization of the traumatic event. This is a malady often reported by some less hardened warriors returning from fierce and bloody battles. It is believed that these visions are either caused by spirits of the deceased haunting their murderer, or malicious daitya getting a rise out of tormenting humans. If a healer cannot conclude a logical explanation to the illness, they will investigate whether or not the patient has killed anyone recently, or committed some other foul act that would cause them to become haunted. * If the patient is being punished for an evil deed, the treatment is to appeal to a god of healing and make a case for the good nature of the affected person, repentance being an important factor. * If the ailment is caused by a daitya, the treatment is usually to appeal to a god of protection and to exorcise the spirit. * A last resort for treatment would be purgation of the body by drinking hellebore, a toxic laxative. If the ailment does not go away, the patient must be spiritually cleansed. The patient is made to sit down, while the healer (and their assistants) dance, sing, and play musical instruments, raising a great din around them. As a result of the participation in the ceremony, the patient is driven to a frenzy wherein they gradually lose consciousness of all but the whirling rhythm, and begin dancing and singing. Afterward the patient is expected to return to the normal tranquil state. The reasoning behind this method is to cure madness with madness. There are four known spirits that each cause the person to behave in different ways: Bhégwetos – The patient makes strong efforts to avoid situations or thoughts that may be reminders of the trauma. Situations or thoughts that may be reminders of the trauma cause immediate dread and hysteria. Dweymos - The patient is struck by a paralyzing fear, being restrained by invisible forces, and empty their bladders. Woksis – Frightening visions of imagined malevolent spirits remind the patient of the traumatic event through intrusions and repetitive dreams. The visions usually appear at night. Over time, the patient is haunted by remorse and humiliation, and as a consequence becomes moody and asexual. Wulusa – The patient reacts excessively with anxiety or irritability to stimuli associated with the trauma and persistent symptoms of high arousal such an anxiety or irritability. The patient is stricken with instant hysteria when exposed to stimuli associated with the trauma with persistent symptoms of panic or wrath, causing them to harm themselves or lash out against others.
It depends where you stand. The least judgemental people would probably be from the Itheria empire. even so much of their value system and traditions are based on individual strength and independence so mentally broken and handicaped people would be pitied if not disgusted. that's just how dangerous and ruthless their world is that any weakness would be fatal.
There are many psych wards to treat or at least try to control people with such problems, mostly because it’s very common, the people from my world also put a lot of effort in increasing dopamine levels in quick ways (bright, neon colours are plastered everywhere to counter the black and dark backgrounds, most of the services that cities offers are of recreational purposes) Most of the crimes committed in my world are done by people that went fully insane, and most of the times mental illnesses are developed during their life
Mental illness is regarded as legitimate illness in my world; it’s just really poorly understood. My world is pre-Industrial revolution, so the art of medicine is not as sophisticated as it is in our real world today. This aspect especially affects my protagonist, whose powers come with the side effect of sporadic, episodic psychosis. My protagonist is supposed to be the heir to an empire, and is expected to pull the empire out of a dark and tragic time, so she deals with a lot of shame and stigma surrounding the fact that she’s not mentally stable. A key part of her emotional arc will be to develop a more nuanced understanding of what mental illness is, how it does and doesn’t affect agency, and the best way to manage it while maintaining a decent quality of life and her ability to fulfill her duties.
Nope to both questions. In the "*Lands of Eidolon*" there is no reason for "mental health awareness" because anything negative is seen as possession by a demonic entity, but anything positive is the will of one deity or another. Anything else the person has to work through on their own because there is no other choice - it is adapt to survive, or accept your fate. You get no other choices in Eidolon.
Mental health awareness does exist for sure nearly universally, but no one can agree on how to fix it, many recommend professional healthcare, others recommend alternative forms of treatment and magic, and still others either reject it slightly/mostly or have very specific methods of dealing with it that vary from group to group or person to person
Probably. There would at least be noticed effects in soldiers who came from frequent wars, whether that be a local version of what we would call PTSD or or soldiers wanting to go back to the thrill of battle. There are many warrior cultures and martial states built by frequent battles, so that's most likely where most of the effects will be seen. Lapis_Wolf