Cultures of Neurasthenia
Cultures of Neurasthenia

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-08-22

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 9004333401

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Neurasthenia, meaning nerve weakness, was ‘invented’ in the United States as a disorder of modernity, caused by the fast pace of urban life. Soon after, from the early 1880s onwards, this modern disease crossed the Atlantic. Neurasthenia became much less ‘popular’ in Britain or the Netherlands than in Germany. Neurasthenia’s heyday continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. The label referred to conditions similar to those currently labelled as chronic fatigue syndrome. Why this rise and fall of neurasthenia, and why these differences in popularity This book, which emerged out of an Anglo-Dutch-German conference held in June 2000, explores neurasthenia’s many-sided history from a comparative perspective.

Neurasthenic Nation
Neurasthenic Nation

Author: David G. Schuster

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 9780813551319

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As the United States rushed toward industrial and technological modernization in the late nineteenth century, people worried that the workplace had become too competitive, the economy too turbulent, domestic chores too taxing, while new machines had created a fast-paced environment that sickened the nation. Physicians testified that, without a doubt, modern civilization was causing a host of ills—everything from irritability to insomnia, lethargy to weight loss, anxiety to lack of ambition, and indigestion to impotence. They called this condition neurasthenia. Neurasthenic Nation investigates how the concept of neurasthenia helped doctors and patients, men and women, and advertisers and consumers negotiate changes commonly associated with “modernity.” Combining a survey of medical and popular literature on neurasthenia with original research into rare archives of personal letters, patient records, and corporate files, David Schuster charts the emergence of a “neurasthenic nation”—a place where people saw their personal health as inextricably tied to the pitfalls and possibilities of a changing world.

Before Freud
Before Freud

Author: Francis George Gosling

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780252014062

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The Neurasthenia-Depression Controversy
The Neurasthenia-Depression Controversy

Author: Donald McLawhorn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1000372030

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This book is about the largest debate that has occurred in the field of cultural psychiatry and its impact on diagnosing, theorizing, and clinical practice. It is also about the role of culture in psychopathology specifically in relation to China. This book is the first comprehensive and critical assessment of the anthropological psychiatry that has provided Western physicians with their ideas about somatization and culture. It is argued that psychiatric nosology and the broader cultural milieu interact in a fascinating way and co-facilitate individual conformity to culturally salient categories, consciously or unconsciously, through a process of belief, expectation, and learning. The result is that codified experiences can be translated from the mind to the body and back again. Through a critical evaluation of the Neurasthenia-Depression controversy, we can gain a view of the contested and shifting nature of psychiatric nosology, and thereby attempt to introduce the beginnings of a model that elucidates how psychiatric distress varies across cultures. This timely book challenges conventional wisdom about neurasthenia and depression in Chinese societies. Its findings will be of value to anyone who works with Chinese people with these mental illnesses across the global diaspora.