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Life sciences · Journal article
Cyprus Turkish Journal of Psychiatry and Psychology · August 3, 2026
Raises a question worth testing. It does not answer one.
This descriptive qualitative literature review compares Ibn Sīnā's medieval account of melancholia with modern psychiatric and biopsychosocial frameworks, identifying conceptual correspondences through thematic coding. The study argues that Ibn Sīnā's approach anticipates contemporary integrative models, but does not test this claim empirically or measure clinical validity.
Descriptive qualitative literature review. Historical medical and philosophical texts; contemporary academic literature on humoral medicine, medieval Islamic thought, and modern psychiatry..
Ibn Sīnā attributes melancholia to disturbances in black bile and dysfunctional processes in spleen, liver, and intestines. Symptom patterns described by Ibn Sīnā resemble modern classifications of major depression, bipolar disorder, and mixed affective states, including fear, obsessive ideation, delusional beliefs, and psychomotor agitation. Ibn Sīnā's therapeutic recommendations include humoral regulation, dietary and bodily interventions, and psychological support through conversation, music, and social engagement.
Safety was not reported in the material analysed. Check the source before drawing any conclusion about harm.
This work is interpretive and scholarly rather than evidence-based for clinical practice. Clinicians should recognize it as a historical analysis highlighting conceptual antecedents in medieval medicine, not as validation of any therapeutic approach.
A descriptive qualitative literature review drawing thematic correspondences between historical medical texts and modern psychiatric frameworks; raises interpretive questions rather than testing hypotheses with empirical data.
As stated by the source record.
This work is interpretive and scholarly rather than evidence-based for clinical practice. Clinicians should recognize it as a historical analysis highlighting conceptual antecedents in medieval medicine, not as validation of any therapeutic approach.
Graded across the dimensions that decide whether you should act, each from what the source actually supports. There is no single score, and where a dimension was not assessed it says so.
What is missing. This record has no reported figures. That is a gap in the analysis, not a judgement about the study.
Melancholia, historically rooted in ancient Greek humoral theory, was conceptualized as a disorder arising from an excess of black bile and affecting both bodily and mental functions. Through the translation movements, this medical heritage entered the Islamic world, where Ibn Sīnā reformulated it within a systematic philosophical and clinical framework. Despite extensive scholarship on humoral medicine and medieval Islamic thought, there remains a gap in the literature concerning the systematic comparison of Ibn Sīnā’s account of melancholia with contemporary psychiatric and biopsychosocial models of mood disorders. This study addresses this gap by analyzing Ibn Sīnā’s conceptualization of melancholia across its medical, psychological, and philosophical dimensions and by examining its relevance to modern psychiatric frameworks. A descriptive qualitative literature review was conducted, using al-Qānūn fī al-Tibb as the primary source and drawing on secondary academic studies from the medical, philosophical, and psychiatric literature. The analysis employed thematic coding to identify historical, conceptual, and clinical correspondences. The findings indicate that Ibn Sīnā attributes melancholia to disturbances in black bile and to dysfunctional processes involving organs such as the spleen, liver, and intestines. He describes symptom patterns that resemble modern classifications of major depression, bipolar disorder, and mixed affective states, including fear, obsessive ideation, delusional beliefs, and psychomotor agitation. His therapeutic recommendations combine humoral regulation, dietary and bodily interventions, and psychological support through conversation, music, and social engagement. The study’s original contribution lies in demonstrating that Ibn Sīnā’s account of melancholia constitutes an early integrative, psychosomatic perspective that anticipates elements of contemporary mood-disorder theories. By foregrounding the interplay among physiological imbalance, cognitive processes, and emotion regulation, this study highlights the relevance of Ibn Sīnā’s framework to current biopsychosocial approaches in psychiatry.
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