Nervous Breakdown

Medically there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown. But when a successful businessman, after meeting a series of setbacks, develops crotchets and then suddenly goes to pieces, even his physician will call his condition a nervous breakdown. Technically the businessman is suffering from a neurosis. He is not mad. Nor is he apt to go insane. His inability to cope with people and circumstances has thrown him into a complex mental-emotional turmoil and shaken his entire personality. With a patient, learned psychiatrist as his guide he may clamber out of the debacle and regain a stout hold on life. But the paths he takes must be peculiarly his own. for psychiatrists have not mapped all the bad lands of the neuroses. Some of the primary facts of what passes for a nervous breakdown, the April issue of FORTUNE, with the help of eminent psychiatrists, ably sets forth for laymen.

Neuroses do not always explode into nervous breakdowns. Habitual stammering, scratching the nose, twiddling, scolding or recoiling are signs of trouble in one's personality and serve as safety valves. If such signs of nervousness continue for a long time a neurotic disease is almost certain to develop. Among such groups of ailments are:

Neurasthenia or nervous prostration. The victim feels mentally and physically tired. He is lazy, cannot force himself to work. The neurasthenic often suffers aches and pains in various organs. The pains are real to the neurasthenic, but his doctor can find no physical cause for them.

Hysteria. A hysterical person may show every physical sign of every disease that ever afflicted mankind. A hysterical virgin may swell up as if she is about to bear a baby. A hysterical man's hand may shrivel as if palsied. Amnesia is a form of hysteria.

Psychasthenia. This is the only type of neurosis which shows no physical symptoms. The victim is ridden by an obsession of which he is aware but which he cannot control; otherwise he can think clearly. Some psychasthenics cannot avoid stepping on the cracks of sidewalks or washing their hands every few minutes. Among psychasthenics are claustrophobes, who fear enclosed spaces; agoraphobes, who fear open spaces; acrophobes, who fear high places; zoophobes, who fear animals; siderodromophobes, who fear locomotives.

Anxiety States are the commonest of all neuroses. The patient is in a continuous condition of fear, physically and mentally. His heart palpitates; his limbs are weak; he cannot digest his food; he sweats easily; he gets out of breath. Mentally he is often the victim of one of the foregoing phobias. Dr. Sigmund Freud believes that anxiety states are always caused by sexual frustration. But, says FORTUNE, "most psychiatrists would also include financial worries, domestic friction, and other non-sexual causes. In some ways an anxiety state resembles an acute neurasthenia."

Objective Factors: In their groping for causes and conditions of nervous breakdowns physicians have isolated these objective facts:

Children, as well as adults, may suffer nervous breakdowns. Overwork does not cause them, although it may precipitate an attack. There is nothing in the popular idea that only the wealthy have breakdowns. Nothing has yet been definitely established as to the role of heredity in causing neuroses. In general more highly developed personalities tend to develop neurotic quirks, more primitive personalities to go really crazy. Small-town and farm people are as prone to have breakdowns as are big city people. The Depression, except for increasing the U. S. suicide rate, has so far caused no striking increase in the number of U. S. nervous breakdowns.

Treatment of nervous breakdowns is called psychotherapy. There are two primary methods:

Suggestion, "which injects a psychological antitoxin into the patient's mind to drive out the mental infection."

Psychoanalysis, "which digs down to the hidden cause of the infection and sterilizes it by exposing it to the sunlight of the consciousness."

Chief divergence: "Psychoanalysis aims to discover the causes back of the symptoms and must do that to be successful, whereas suggestion, not directly concerned with 'why,' simply commands the symptoms to disappear, ignoring the causes. If the patient believes strongly enough in the doctor or the treatment, suggestion may work." Hence the successful cures accomplished in special neurotic cases by Christian Science, Buchmanism, Seventh-Day Adventism, and Coueism. Psychoanalysis "may uncover entirely too much for the patient's peace of mind. Cures by suggestion, on the other hand, are often superficial, depending on constant renewal of the. suggestion to avoid relapses."

Doctors who treat nervous breakdowns generally agree that the foremost U. S. authorities in their field are:

Dr. William Alanson White, 65, No.1 U. S. practicing psychiatrist, longtime head of 5,3O9-bed St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington.

Dr. Adolf Meyer, 68, No.1 U. S. research psychiatrist, Switzerland-born, head of Johns Hopkins' Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic since 1910.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.