Neurasthenia - Symptoms, Kinds, Causes, Cure

Neurotic disorders are considered to be of five kinds.

1.     Neurasthenia

2.     Anxiety neurosis

3.     Anxiety hysteria

4.     Obsessive - compulsive neurosis

5.     Hysteria

Neurasthenia:

This term Neurasthenia was first used by the Americans Scientist Beard in 1880 in the sense of nervous exertion. Nowadays

it is employed to denote complaints of physical and mental exhaustion.

Symptoms of Neurasthenia:

1.     Fatigue is a factor that every individual experiences at sometime or the other. The following differences between normal fatigue and Neurasthenia fatigue should be noticed.

2.     Normal fatigue and exhaustion can be easily got rid of by rest but the fatigue of the disease does not leave the person after rest. Even when getting up in the morning the patient gets exhausted.

3.     Common fatigue is a temporary state of the body but in this disease it is more permanent.

4.     Normal exhaustion is normally the outcome of mental or physical effort but in this disease, fatigue remains even when no exertion has been done.

5.     Normal fatigue is concerned with muscles but in this disease no connection between fatigue and muscular exertion is noticeable.

Kinds of neurasthenia:

Psychiatrists treating neurasthenia divide it into two classes, acute or secondary neurasthenia and chronic or primary neurasthenia.

Acute neurasthenia:

This can be caused by any disease of the body that undermines contribution or otherwise leaves some kind of poison or toxin in the body. It is also caused in nurses if they work for longer period without adequate rest and relaxation. This is also true of other occupations (soldier) in which work is done over long periods continuously without intermittent rest. The symptom observed is fatigue.

The patient constantly complains of insomnia and lack of appetite. He tends to irritability and finds difficult to concentrate on any ward. Even the slightest efforts leave him fixed and exhausted, debilitated and shun down.

Emotional control is often lost with the result that he tends to be conscious. His head tends to heaviness, his memory becomes weak and he does not enjoy doing anything. Besides these psychological symptoms the patient also exhibits certain physical signs of the disease.

Fatigue often accompanied by a wide fluctuation with rate of pulse from very high to very low. He tends to perspire much and heart beats at a rapid rate.

Chronic or primary neurasthenia:

In this the patient often appears disgruntled and discouraged, depressed and fatigued. Beside fatigue he complains headache, backache, irritability and anxiety commonly prevails. He shows signs of indigestion and easily becomes excited over the smallest incidents.

Causes of neurasthenia:

Weakness of central nervous system, haziness and inactivity, auto intoxication over work and anxiety, mental disintegration caused by abnormal fatigue and emotional experience, level of excitement and frequency of discharge of seminal fluid, emotional conflict and tension and withdrawal are some of the causes. 

of introvert are prone to become neurasthenic.

Cure of neurasthenia:

Rest, nutritive food, hypnosis re-education, psychoanalysis may help benefit the patient than medication.