Renaming ‘Breakdown’

As diagnosis of mental illness has changed with shifting cultural attitudes, now the term “nervous breakdown” is being reevaluated. Are you on the verge of “burnout syndrome”? “‘Nervous breakdown’ is one of those sturdy old terms, like ‘melancholia’ and ‘nervous illness,’ that haven’t really been surpassed, although they sound antiquated,’ the historian Edward Shorter, co-author with Max Fink of the book ‘Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia,’ said in an e-mail message,” according to the New York Times. “Never a proper psychiatric diagnosis, the phrase always struck most doctors as inexact, pseudoscientific and often misleading. But those were precisely the qualities that gave it such a lasting place in the popular culture, some scholars say.”