No disease exists until it is perceived, named and defined. Madness, quintessential transgression, is no exception. Throughout history it has always been explained according to beliefs, norms and dominant ideas in each type of society; that is, it is the collective that manufactures its meaning, that determines which behaviors are "strings" and which are not. Thus a process is created with dynamics that, beyond the limits of medicine, come to permeate myths, philosophy, religion or art. Based on this conception of madness as a socio-cultural construction, this book describes the origin of many of the stigmas that continue to fuel our imagination on mental disorders. A journey that explores the bonds that have been established between madness and genius, evil, sexuality or poverty, to offer a vision of the different ways of understanding it, and of acting on it, over the centuries. But understanding what madness means requires a broad vision that also takes into account the eminently human component of such an experience, so this work is a wake-up call about the need to modulate our own attitude towards people with a psychiatric diagnosis and to overcome the stigma that entails.