Melancholia a Psychiatric Disorder Described in Unani System of Medicine: Its Similarities and Differences with Depression

Melancholia is a Latin transcription of the Greek word melaina chole, which in ancient Greece mainly meant “biliousness,” and was also used, in medical speech “to signify insane or anxious conduct. In Unani system of medicine, Melancholia is classified into three categories according to the site affected by the disease. Persian scholars, including Rhazes, Ahmad bin Mohammad Tabri, Haly Abbas, and Avicenna, have given a detailed description of this disorder as a disease. Avicenna, in his treatise, The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun Fittib) has defined it as a kind of disorder in which imagination and judgment are so perverted that the victims become very sad and fearful. Some surveys were performed on Unani literature about melancholia and depression. The books consulted were mainly The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun Fittib), The Complete Book of the Medical Art (Kamil Sana), College (Kitabbul Kulliyat), Kitabul Umda Fil Jarahat, Tib Akbar. This study is constructed on a scrupulous overview of writings, compositions, and publications on melancholia and depression using internet sources like Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, Medline. There are numerous similarities between melancholia, a disease described in Unani system of medicine, and present-day depression, described in the conventional system of medicine. There are also a few differences between the two. Unani scholars were aware of psychiatric disorders and the concept is a collaborative effort of both ancient and conventional systems of medicine.