If you're going to say or imply that surviving these experiences, or being tolerated for experiencing them, was only "a small proportion" then you're ma

If you're going to say or imply that surviving these experiences, or being tolerated for experiencing them, was only "a small proportion" then you're making broad assertions. It's a broad assertion I feel safe making from what I've read, and from what I know of human nature, and the often toxic dynamics of small communities. Being different in a small tribe sucks. Yeah, if you're different in just the right way, you're venerated as a shaman or religious figure. But I feel absolutely safe in asserting that for the average mentally ill person, being mentally ill in a pre-modern society would have been worse, both in quantity and quality of life. Maybe you wouldn't have been exiled, as such. But you would have been a marginalized outsider in an environment that was far more resource constrained than the environment in which we live today, and which rewarded conformity to a far greater degree.