I’m just reading Lisa Appignanesi’s so-far excellent book Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present where she reproduces an 1810 table of causes of insanity from London’s Bethlem Hospital on p54.
It was compiled by the physician William Black and lists various afflictions that have apparently caused mental illness followed by a count of the number of affected patients.
Misfortunes, Troubles, Disappointments
Grief (206)
Religion and Methodism (90)
Love (74)
Jealousy (9)
Pride (8)
Study (15)
Fright (31)
Drink and Intoxication (58)
Fevers (110)
Childbed [i.e. birth or nursing babies] (79)
Obstruction (10)
Family and Heredity (115)
Contusions and Fractures of the Skull (12)
Venereal (14)
Small Pox (7)
Ulcers and Scabs dried up (5)
Mind Hacks 