General Background: I remember reading that around the time of Freud, women in high society were afflicted by “catatonia”. Apparently, when they got stressed out, they’d become frozen like a statue. Upon reading this, I was reminded of a time when classy women would faint when something frightening happened.
Personal Background: Nowadays, we hear about “panic attacks”. These are darn bad things to have – I suffered from them for eight years, so I speak from experience. Yet as recently as 20 years ago, nobody was talking about them. I actually visited a psychologist in 1980 to find out what was happening to me, but she didn’t seem to have a clue. (She certainly never mentioned the term “panic attack”.)
Question: Nowadays, you don’t hear of women suffering from catatonia, and I’ve never known of a woman who fainted for any reason. But I do know lots of people who suffer from panic attacks (some of whom suffered from it prior to 1980).
So my question is this: are the manifestations of psychological problems somehow tied in to the era in which you live? In 20 years, will anxious people find some new way to freak out?
I don’t know if it’s tied to panic attacks, per se, but, yes, some psychological “conditions” are linked to that which is expected.
So if society widely expects women to faint under certain circumstances, it is more likely that they will. In a way, it’s not terribly unlike the placebo (or nocebo) effect.
Yup. In a lot of cases it is the same old thing with a brand new name.
For example, for a time in the 19th century, just about any women’s psychological problems were called “hysteria.” (The word is used differently today.) It was thought that all of women’s problems came from the condition of their wombs. Hysteria and hysterectomy come from the same root.
There is some interesting work that has been done in the history of disease. If anybody wants, I can dig up some cites.
Different models/theories to treat the very same mental illnesses. I bet there’s a slight placebo effect about what symptoms are expressed, but its serious illness none-the-less.
There’s one now: uh, aquired environmental allergy syndrome? or something like that. People who have it claim to be allergic to nearly everything except (I dunno why) ceramic tile. They even claim to be able to develop allergies to new substances, from only a few exposures. Usually no outwardly visible symptoms, lots of internal ones not subject to medical verification. Most sufferers are middle-class white housewives.
Attention Deficit Disorder is another recent “addition”, suspected by many of being a misdiagnosis of other problems such as hyperactivity, or of nothing at all. Analysis of parental expectations is beginning to play a part in diagnosis.
Gulf War Syndrome (as a whole) is suspected to be partly due to mental illness. Patterns of “sufferers” do not fit patterns of exposure, in many cases. - MC
It’s an interesting topic, and worthwhile, I think.
It seems there’s a diagnosis for every slightly less than “normal” physical and emotional condition these days.
Not a bad thing, I suppose, but I notice it most where I work. We’ve had doctors take people off work for several days (even weeks) for “stress/anxiety” or “situational disorder” in cases where:
Kid was having trouble at school – parents stressed
The worst examples seem to be among the 20-30 year olds. The older (40’s and up) folks seem to have more ability to deal with these problems.
Whatever happened to bucking up and dealing with life’s minor stresses? Generation of weenies coming up, if you ask me.
Sorry for the minor hijack. But like I said, it’s an interesting phenomena – trendy diseases – and I’d like to know if it’s a fairly recent thing or if it’s always been this way.
I, myself, happen to suffer from an Obsessive/Compulsive disorder manifesting itself in my desire to frequent a certain Bulletin Board (which shall remain nameless, due to confidentiality restrictions). My therapist terms the condition, “Dopermania”.
Slight hijack?
An aspect I find interesting, is the tendency at various oeriods to attribute similar symptom complexes to either psychological or physiological causes. Witness the recent development of “physical” impairments with few or no specific symptoms. Chronic pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, fibromyositis, chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barre. How do you differentially diagnose chronic pain syndrome. It seems these are currently in ascendance, with “psychological” diagnoses such as somatoform disorder, conversion disorder, hypochondria, etc. on the wane. Then comes the question of overlay. Fibromyalgia with somatofirm overlay? Yeah, right! It was certainly easier to simply diagnose women with hysteria and prescribe laudanum.
In my experience, environmental sensitivity syndrome seems somewhat on the wane. Depression and anxiety are always popular. ADHD seems to be epidemic. My favorite is ODD - Oppositional Defiant Disorder. In my view, it means the kid is a little jerk who could use some discipline.
End of rant.
Where the Hell did ‘Social Anxiety Disorder’ (SAD) come from? Talk about a ‘fashionable disorder’. I think they made that up just so they could sell Paxil, which is really just a generic anti-depressant like Prozac, isn’t it? And please don’t misinterpret this as a troll, as I’m sure someone on this board suffers from SAD and takes Paxil. But I’d like to know how being shy became a disease. To me, it’s really just a more general symptom of depression. That is, low self esteem, fear of judgement, leads one to remove themselves from social situations.
I think everyone faces general anxiety when they have to speak in public, or when thrown into a situation with total strangers, but we adjust and deal with it. My personal rant is that this disease doesn’t need a drug. I’d bet 90% of the people on it really don’t need it, and those who do that are complete shut-ins really need a more broad spectrum anti-depressant anyway.
Part of what’s going on is a decrease in the stigma attached to emotional rather than purely physical disease or disorder, with effective medications being developed and more readily used by the public. I suffer from panic attacks when not taking the infamous Paxil, and it gives me a higher quality of life. I struggled for a long time with the issue of taking pills (or going to therapy at all for that matter) for something which I should be able to handle myself (I guess you can will yourself well from diabetes too), which I should be strong enough to control. Finally I got so exhausted (physically and emotionally) from that I decided to try medication and it helps. I was actually relieved to have this disorder named because without that you feel like you’re losing it. This way there is a name and a range of treatments. Older members of my family who were of a generation that taught you to suck it up continue to be haunted and psychotic and make the rest of our lives worse. I vote for treatment.
As far as Social Anxiety Diosorder is concerned, yes, I am shy anyway, but with medication I am not paralyzed to go into a situation where I know logically I will not be hurt. I am not clinically depressed and a low level of medication helps me be more comfortable. I hope others will consider the possibility.
Part of the trend is that we have a lot more time on our hands to be introspective and focus on the “me” than the populace of years ago. I believe higher-class women fainted because they were taught to have delicate sensibilities; I wonder if poorer women had time for all that?
You are right. SAD is Seasonal Affective Disorder. What they meant to call the new disorder was PATHETIC.
It seems that for every disorder that comes around the pike, a bunch of people latch on to it for either attention, or to get out of working.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, people were claiming MPD(Multiple Personality Disorder). Out of the people who I saw who claimed to have it, only one was/seemed genuine. The rest seemed like acting that wouldn’t even pass muster on a soap opera.
Now that the pharmecutical companies are feeding into it and hawking their products to the ‘afflicted,’ how many people will feel they are ‘heard’ and go it for a diagnosis and prescription.
What about the good old days where you’d be nervous to give a speech and you’d down a hard shot of Jack Daniels?
Yarster, I’m sure you weren’t intending to troll, but there is a wide gulf between being shy and being so pathologically unable to cope with normal socialization you cut yourself off from what are considered normal, even necessary forms of interaction. The former is something that can be dealt with by a layperson on their own. The latter requires considerable intervention, up to and including medication. Is it as prevalent as Paxil ads would lead us to believe? No. But then it’s not the sole province of attention starved hypochondriacs, either.
Psychology and Psychiatry are still in their infancy. Until we have a way to directly and easily measure things like neurotransmitter levels and brain structure, it’s all a guessing game of confusing symptoms and hit-and-miss treatments. Certainly there are red herrings. There are also conditions are disabling to the patient but have been ignored by the medical establishment.
BTW, Hastur, could you explain to me the difference between medicating something with Paxil and medicating it with alcohol? They are, after all, both drugs.
Great thread!
At the beginning of the 20th century, the really
“in” condition was something called “neurasthenia”. I am not a doctor, but I understand that this was a catch all condition, much like ADD is today. As another poster mentioned, lots of women had “female hysteria”-which made (rich women anyways)people eligible for long, expensive vacation trips to the sanatoriums/spas that were so popular in those days.lReally, every culture has its own ailments-in Maylaya, men frequently suffer from an “amok”- a sort of nervous breakdown, accompanied by violent behavior. I guess you might say that our psychological “ailments” are more a reflection of our culture and how we choose to define “normality”.
A good book on this topic is Elaine Showalter’s Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and the Modern Media. Showalter takes on (and look at the list of enemies this lady wants to make):
Understand that a lot of the disorders discussed in this thread are legit. Social Anxiety Disorder has been around for a long time, my next door neighbor has suffered for as long as I can remember. My father is a mental health councilor with the VA, and Gulf War Syndrome does have some merit. Howard Urnovitz , PhD, talks about GWS and chronic conditions in his address to House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans’ Affairs and International Relations. Worth a peak.
I wrote a 15 page paper on Multiple Personality Disorder, or the new and improved title, Dissociative Idenity Disorder. Basically, people who have been abused or traumatised (and therefore more vulnerable to suggestion) are sent to these “specialists” who then proceed to use hypnosis or hypnotic techinique to convince the person they have MPD. Once the person believes it, they truely do shatter. It’s tragic. Of the topics that Johnny Angel mentioned, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Recovered Memory and Alien Abduction all go hand in hand with MPD.
But don’t assume that because a psychological classification is new, that it is a “trend.” People are herd animals, and we’ll go with whatever the rest of the herd is doing. But to assume all new diagnosis are false is endangering some legitimately sick people, and withholding proper medical treatment.