As a psychopathological term, the first to publish on neurasthenia was Michigan alienist E. H. Van Deusen of the Kalamazoo asylum in 1869, followed a few months later by New York neurologist George Beard, also in 1869 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, while Beard connected the condition to busy society women and overworked businessmen.
Physicians in the Beard school of thought associated neurasthenia with the stresses of urbanization and with stress suffered as a result of the increasingly competitive business environment. Typically, it was associated with upper class people and with professionals working in sedentary occupations, but really can apply to anyone who lives within the monetary system .
Psychological term. Medical condition. Neurasthenia. Pronunciation. / ˌnjʊərəsˈθiːniə / NEWR-əs-THEE-nee-ə. Specialty. Psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy. Neurasthenia is a term that was first used at least as early as 1829 to label a mechanical weakness of the nerves and would become a major diagnosis in North America during ...
Nevertheless, neurasthenia was a common diagnosis during World War I for " shell shock ", but its use declined a decade later. Soldiers who deserted their post could be executed even if they had a medical excuse, but officers who had neurasthenia were not executed.
Neurasthenia has largely been abandoned as a medical diagnosis. The ICD-10 system of the World Health Organization categorizes neurasthenia under "F48 - Other neurotic disorders".
Barbara Ehrenreich, restating James's view, considers that neurasthenia was caused by the Calvinist gloom, and it was helped by the New Thought, through replacing the "puritanical 'demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing'" with a more hopeful faith.
Neurasthenia is currently a diagnosis in the World Health Organization 's International Classification of Diseases (and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry 's Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders ). However, it is no longer included as a diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association 's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.