Nervous Breakdowns and How to Avoid Them

by Charles David Musgrove

Hobbies in the treatment of breakdowns.

And they not only act as a direct preventive of breakdowns themselves, but they are an invaluable aid to other forms of treatment. If a lethargic person is ordered to take exercise, it is a constant difficulty to keep him up to it, unless he has some other inducement. Get him to take up some outdoor pursuit, such as gardening or natural history in one or other of its multifarious phases, and he will have exercise in abundance without knowing that he is taking it. Numbers of men would be vastly better in health, too, if they had more exercise after reaching home, especially on winter evenings, instead of sitting by the fire until bedtime. If told to take up physical drill, they may go on with it for a time, but will almost certainly get tired of these duty exercises after a while. Persuade them to take up wood carving or carpentry, and they will get all that they need and a large measure of enjoyment at the same time.

Many a case of gout, dyspepsia, sluggish liver and such-like ailments in stout, plethoric persons can be cured by this means more effectually than by any other.

Or it may be that patients are ordered rest, because of some overstrain, or a weakness in some particular organ, as the lungs or heart. It is difficult enough to secure this rest in the case of a woman, but in that of a man it is wellnigh impossible. There is no more restless being than a man who is either confined to the house or unable to walk far. He gets tired of reading and playing “Patience,” and the result is that in most instances he moons about aimlessly, a nuisance to himself and to those around him. Once let him take up some hobby which will interest him, and the case becomes entirely different. He can take his camera and photograph places or people, near at hand or farther away according to his powers of walking, and can find ample occupation in the evenings or on wet days, developing, printing and arranging the pictures he has taken.

Or he can take his specimen case and spend whole days quietly hunting for wild flowers, birds’ eggs, or anything else he is inclined for, and obtain a vast amount of pleasure afterwards in setting out his treasures. Or he can do a bit of gardening, heavy or light according to his capabilities, and if he has a greenhouse he can fill up his time profitably when the state of the weather does not permit of outside work.

Hobbies have ceased to be regarded simply as a means of putting in time, and have come to occupy an important part in medical treatment. Consumptive sanatoria, for instance, present a very different appearance now from what they did some years ago. At that time the visitor was met with the pitiable spectacle of a melancholy array of dispirited patients, lying about in all stages of dejection. Now he sees men and women engaged in gardening and other outdoor pursuits, looking as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves, which is just what they are doing.

The same benefit from such pursuits is found in all cases where fresh air is required, as in anæmia, neurasthenia, etc. An outdoor hobby secures the fresh air, and supplies the best of tonics for nervous systems. And when breathing exercises are ordered at the same time, the easiest way to ensure their being carried out is to induce the patient to learn singing, which is the best and most agreeable form in which they can be applied.

As to the stage of convalescence from any illness, any medical man will testify that people who have hobbies get well very much sooner than those who have not. And in this case, as in all those of people whose lives and movements are limited owing to some physical weakness, if they have no such pursuits to brighten their lives, the incessant worrying and brooding are very liable to result in neurasthenia, which is the half-way house to breakdowns.

And for those of my readers who still retain the priceless gift of health, and wish to retain it, a hobby is better than all the riches in the world. It is independent of riches, too, for anyone can cultivate it, the poor as easily as the wealthy. More easily, in fact, for the more difficult a thing is to acquire the more we enjoy it when we have secured it. The man or woman who can fill their house with treasures of art and literature simply by signing a cheque rarely appreciate what they have got.

Choice of a hobby.