Funny you should put it that way, because Psychiatry as a field historically evolved directly out of the witch hunts of the Inquisition.[1]
As the Church fell out of favor during the Enlightenment the very first Psychiatrists literally asserted that all the people who were labeled witches by the Inquisition were actually just "mentally ill", even though their understanding of the mind and their methods used to "treat" it (torture, mostly) had hardly changed at all.
As the Church fell out of favor during the Enlightenment the very first Psychiatrists literally asserted that all the people who were labeled witches by the Inquisition were actually just "mentally ill", even though their understanding of the mind and their methods used to "treat" it (torture, mostly) had hardly changed at all.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/Manufacture-Madness-Comparative-Inqui...