Nervous Breakdowns and How to Avoid Them

by Charles David Musgrove

The cause of the breakdown.

Then, when the crash comes, we blame our nerves, our civilisation, our worries and troubles, our heredity, anything in short except ourselves. Of course, there are cases in which circumstances have entered over which the patient has had no control. Sometimes neurasthenia follows a severe illness or a bad accident. Sometimes it comes on at critical periods of life. And in some instances heredity has played a part. There are some unfortunate individuals who have been born with weak frames and little stamina, so that even the ordinary conditions of life, however favourable, prove too much for them.

The Remedy.

Such cases are the exception. In the great majority of instances the faults which have undermined the system are the results of mistakes, either through ignorance or thoughtlessness, in the mode of life. Not necessarily, observe, a vicious mode of life. The victims may have been consistently sober and virtuous. Yet they may have been guilty of egregious errors in regard to the quantity or quality of the food they have taken, or the way in which they have eaten it or in their neglect of fresh air, exercise or rest. The fault may lie in any one of these elements, or in more than one; in all of them, perhaps. And it is only by close examination of the habits of life that the source of the mischief can be brought to light. In like manner the treatment of nervous breakdowns consists in remedying these faults, once they have been ascertained. Patients seldom understand this fact. What they particularly desire is a tonic to restore their jaded energies, on the principle, evidently, of whipping up a tired horse to make him go.

They look for some patent food which shall build them up in marvellous manner. Articles of this sort are valuable aids in cases where starvation from lack of sufficient food has been the cause of the trouble. But where there has been an error in diet, it has been, in an overwhelming proportion of cases, an excess of food rather than a lack of it, and when this has been so, it is about as rational to give such remedies, as it would be to pile more coals on to a fire that was already choked.

It is not sufficient merely to treat individual symptoms, taking phenacetine for headache, pepsin for indigestion, and so forth; for that is but to touch the fringe of the matter, leaving the real secret of the trouble undealt with.

Neither is it of any use to tell the sufferer that there is nothing the matter, that all he requires is to rouse himself or cease his restlessness, as the case may be. You might as well tell a drowning man who cannot swim to buck up and be cheerful.

The rest cure, so much in vogue, may have its advantages in some cases, but too frequently the patient leaves the institution only to resume his former mode of life, and repeat the very mistakes which brought on the illness. A consumptive might as well never enter a sanatorium if he is to return to a badly-ventilated house and unwholesome surroundings.

Not uncommonly it happens that a man will make up his mind to have a course of treatment at some spa, even though it means a sacrifice of time and money. When he is told that it is his manner of life that needs overhauling, the commonplaceness of the observation affronts him. Like Naaman, he expects to be sent, if not to the waters of Jordan, at any rate to those of Homburg or some such resort, and he strongly objects to being told that all he needs he can get at home.

Some time ago I was travelling from London to Buxton. There were two other men in the carriage, and one of them was telling the other that he was going there for his health. He said that he found it necessary to go several times a year, as he got so run down. The other man asked him what treatment he had on these occasions, did he have baths or drink the waters or what?