Mental Health In Macbeth

William Shakespeare's Macbeth is a play about Macbeth, a cruel and ruthless man who will do anything to gain power, and his wife Lady Macbeth, a disturbed woman with too much evil for her own good. Macbeth’s own ambition gets to him and ultimately leads to his demise. In many ways, Shakespeare's Macbeth is relevant in today's society. Explores mental health problems, greed for power and Leadership, and lastly guilt and its effects.

Lady Macbeth becomes a victim of mental illness as the play progressed. This was due to

Shakespeare wanted to show and display that Macbeth truly has a mental illness. The symptoms he shows are he detaches himself from reality and has no emotions toward anything at this point. Also before he kills Banquo he sees a dagger in front of him and he says “Art thou not, fatal vision sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-opposed brain?” (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 35-39). Then after he kills Banquo he says that he saw his ghost at a banquet.

In the Shakespearean play, Macbeth, the manipulation by three witches take a toll on a local thane by the name of Macbeth. They have such an effect on him, he goes as far to kill the King of Forres, Scotland and becomes King. However, the memory and guilt of his deeds sends the now-King, Macbeth into a spiral of insanity into his demise. Macbeth displays positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms of the schizophrenic disease which is caused by the oppressive powers of the witches, Lady Macbeth, and the actions he committed.

In the beginning of the play, before we are formally introduced to Macbeth, Macbeth is portrayed by King Duncan, as a loyal, brave and a heroic fighter. The King praises him, setting up Macbeth's initial character as an over all well rounded, strong person, leading the audience to belief Macbeth is a sane, honest person. However, through the next few acts to the finale, we witness Macbeth's portrayal shift to one with blind ambition and crude desire. We see his mental status deteriorate as well as the actions that illustrate this continuous decline; until inevitably, his sanity, or lack thereof, catches up with him.

Macbeth shows several symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms are techniques that Shakespeare uses to create the idea that Macbeth actually has a mental illness. Macbeth’s main symptom is detachment from reality. While contemplating killing Banquo to secure his fate, Macbeth begins to see an imaginary dagger in front of him. He asks, “Art thou not, fatal vision sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-opposed brain?” (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 35-39). Then after Banquo is dead, Macbeth believe he sees his ghost during dinner with the county’s nobility. Macbeth says, “The

Mental deterioration can wreak havoc on the human mind, causing unwieldy actions and harm on others. Macbeth is a fifteenth century play written by William Shakespeare. The play is a tragedy about a Scottish general named Macbeth. The play follows Macbeth as he begins to rise to power after he kills a rebel named McDonwald the Thane of Cawdor. Shortly after Macbeth’s major victory, he comes across the wyrd sisters who speak of his future success as the Thane of Cawdor and eventually the King of Scotland. As a reward for his success King Duncan crowned Macbeth Thane of Cawdor. As a result Macbeth is set on a path of death and destruction with one goal in mind, to become king. In the play Macbeth by Shakespeare, Macbeth’s mental deterioration displays the

The play ‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare, is known as one of the Four Great Tragedies of Shakespeare. Tragedy defines the protagonist of a high rank who is essentially good, plummets because of a fatal flaw and causes consequences for everyone. The protagonist Macbeth, is controlled by others and this results in him being hopeless at the end. He is strongly induced by the prophecies the witches foretells, also, Lady Macbeth exerts her will on his choices. Thus, in the end, Macbeth feels hopeless and undervalues his life as a result of being controlled by others.

How could a man fully aware of the horror of his deeds be able to so simply commit them? A lot of people can question this and quite a lot of people have in the reading of Macbeth. What they do not seem to realize is the growing amount of mental illness traits shown in Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. As critic Jan Kott said, “to himself he is not one who is, but rather the one who is not.” Macbeth does not see the problem in the chaos he is creating.

In the Shakespearian play, Macbeth, a story is told of a greatly admired and respected general who in the drive of ambition deteriorates in moral character. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is shown to be brave and mentally stable but his mentality starts to decline when his guilt causes him to be hysterical. Throughout the acts, the witches, the hallucinations, and his hunger for power has all caused him to total madness. Macbeth’s moral decline is further developed with the idea of light and darkness.

As well as seeing the ghost of his murdered friend Banquo at the diner table, he also develops insomnia, and goes so far on as to suggest that he is jealous of Duncan because he can sleep forever whereas he cannot sleep at all. He also loses his appetite and can no longer eat well; this shows that his insides are turning with the memory that he himself had killed a King who had been so good to him and to Scotland. After getting Banquo killed, Macbeth sees his ghost at the banquet with twelve bloody gashes in his head; this makes Macbeth completely insane in an instant. He is not only scared by seeing the ghost of Banquo, but also by the thought that he had done these horrible things, and that his soul would be haunted by his murdered friends ghost for ever. It is through the main characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that this theme of guilt and conscience is so vividly portrayed.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, hidden mental illnesses are often incorporated in the main characters. Macbeth developed schizophrenia, paranoia, and depression, but what about Lady Macbeth? She seemed perfectly stable throughout the story until Act Five, when her sanity declines rapidly due to all of the burdening stress and guilt from Duncan’s murder, which also eventually led to her suicide. Lady Macbeth suffered from Bipolar Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to the murder of Duncan, Macbeth’s murder of Banquo, and the Macduff family murder. Bipolar Depression

Mental health was unheard of in the seventeenth century. So, it was a bold move on Shakespeare's part in writing a play with subtle mentions mental health. Today, people know more about mental health than they did back in the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare added hints towards mental health or post-traumatic stress disorder more specifically through methods of characterization. In Macbeth, the character Lady Macbeth shows symptoms of PTSD, after killing King Duncan, and Banquo.

Lady Macbeth is known to have similar symptoms of schizophrenia. It means to have brain disorder in which reality is mixed with abnormal thoughts (hard to distinguish which is real or fake) and results in mental disorders and hallucinations. Its caused by high amounts/levels of stress and the environment. So Lady Macbeth suffered from the guilt of having planned and executed King

Macbeth can be further diagnosed as a schizophrenic paranoid type, which is a subdivision of schizophrenia. This category is defined by its criteria of: Preoccupation with one or more delusions or frequent auditory hallucinations. Macbeth frequently and vividly hallucinates during the play. The first indicator into his hallucinogenic illness is when he struggles to decide whether or not to kill his good friend, Banquo. As he argues to himself, he begins to imagine a dagger in front of him. Hay says, to himself, “Is this a dagger which I see before me...” (II, 1, 33) “Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (II.2.35-39) In this passage, Macbeth even admits to himself that he is beginning to see things that are not only unreal, but a projected figment of his tainted mind. Soon after, as he returns to see the three witches, who started this whole masquerade, he sees another vision. This time, it is a vision of his future. He sees an armed child, a bloody child, and a child with a crown holding a tree branch. (IV.1) This is meant to represent Macbeth’s future and to warn him of what will happen with MacDuff. He then proceeds to vision all of the former Kings of Scotland