Neurasthenia
Psychological term / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Neurasthenia?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Neurasthenia (from the Ancient Greek νεῦρον neuron "nerve" and ἀσθενής asthenés "weak") is a term that was first used as early as 1829[6] for a mechanical weakness of the nerves.[clarification needed] It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist George Miller Beard reintroduced the concept in 1869.[2]
Neurasthenia | |
---|---|
Pronunciation | |
Specialty | Psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy |
Symptoms | fatigue, lethargy, stress-related headache, insomnia, irritability, malaise, restlessness, stress, and weariness[1][2] |
Differential diagnosis | anxiety, asthenia, chronic fatigue, fatigue, lethargy[3][2][4] |
Treatment | Electrotherapy, rest[5] |
As a psychopathological term, the first to publish on neurasthenia was Michigan alienist E. H. Van Deusen of the Kalamazoo asylum in 1869.[7] Also in 1868, New York neurologist George Beard used the term in an article published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal[1] to denote a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, neuralgia, and depressed mood. Van Deusen associated the condition with farm wives made sick by isolation and a lack of engaging activity; Beard connected the condition to busy society women and overworked businessmen.
Neurasthenia was a diagnosis in the World Health Organization's ICD-10, but deprecated, and thus no more diagnosable, in ICD-11.[2][8] It also is no longer included as a diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.[9] The condition is, however, described in the Chinese Society of Psychiatry's Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders.
Americans were said to be particularly prone to neurasthenia, which resulted in the nickname "Americanitis"[10] (popularized by William James[11]). Another (albeit rarely used) term for neurasthenia is nervosism.[12]