Conversion Disorder Is A Mental Health Condition

According to “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator suffers from a disease called neurasthenia. George Beard first used this term back in 1869 (Beard 217). This disease is also known as “nervous exhaustion” and heightened excitability. Neurasthenia has clear resemblances to hysteria and nervous disease. As a disease, neurasthenia may be identified not as a descendant but a relative of the two. It was back in 1869 that Neurasthenia was identified as a disease that displays fatigue, depression and extreme anxiety (Beard 217). During the nineteenth century, nervous disease transformed into a new disease called “hysteria.” The name hysteria came from the Greek word for uterus. This transformation positioned the

Starkey's "hysterical bobbysoxers" diagnosis has entered the popular canon and school textbooks, while Hansen's verdict of "hysterical in the scientific sense of that term” has been accepted as true by the majority of scholars, Demos, McMillen, and even Karlsen, who treat the cause of affliction as settled and go on to other projects. While I see the cause as not settled, I will look instead at the way the same descriptions of affect have produced such mutually exclusive interpretations -- fraud and illness -- and suggest why fraud went entirely out of fashion, after being accepted for over a century, while hysteria came into fashion oddly, only Upham allows a mixture of fraud and illness. I will suggest that these shifts in interpretation are not founded on any new knowledge or new theories of psychology, but grow out of changes in cultural and ideological attitudes, especially toward women, and that they are made possible by the ambiguities of historical documents, by inadequate analyses of the explanations that were available in 1692, and occasionally by poor reasoning on the part of the historians.

Women have been accused of being “hysterical’ for centuries. Hysteria is defined as “ a psychoneurotic disorder characterized by violent emotional outbreaks, disturbances of sensory and motor functions, and various abnormal effects due to autosuggestion.” Hysteria is not a condition that is specific to only females (Hysteria). Although it is more common among women, men can also become “hysterical” in their lifetime. This idea was proposed in the 1800s by a French neurologists named Jean- Martin Charcot. Charcot believed that hysteria was not a sexual disease that was only in women, he concluded that it was in fact an “inherited nervous disorder” that affected both sexes (Hysteria). Hysteria is a legitimate issue that exists today through

In “Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media” by Elaine Showalter, she writes that Jean-Martin Charcot, who was also known as "the founder of modern neurology", stated that hysteria was determined by hereditary determinants. By researching

“Terror doesn't change people from gay to straight. It just hurts innocent people,” DaShanne Stokes, a recognized thought leader, sociologist, author, and speaker, on conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a pseudoscientific practice that encompasses psychological or spiritual interventions to try and change an individual’s, usually a minor’s, sexual orientation. It has been highly discredited and criticized by all major American medical and psychological organizations and even, in 2001, the United States Surgeon General David Satcher, stated that there was “no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed”. However, conversion therapy still occurs in the United States. This paper looks to examine Ferguson v. JONAH, a case credited as the “first of its kind”, it’s ruling, and the effect it could have on future cases.

The patient is a 36 year old female who presented to the ED with acute psychotic features. The patient reports experiencing God giving her a massage and seeing butterflies. The patient reports hearing God giving her commands. The patient denies suicidal ideations and homicidal ideations. The patient reports depressive symptoms as: guilt, fatigue, tearfulness, irritability, and inflated self-esteem.

This is where the term " hysteria" came from, which meant “a broad diagnosis, assigned to women who displayed too much emotion or demanded too much attention.” Which came about the “hysterical tendencies,” as a way of acting out. Gilman says “if a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?” (Gilman) As the man of the house, her husband John does not want a person to think that there is something wrong with his wife.

The 19th Century was a turning point for many mental illnesses, as physicians started to pay more and more attention to such problems. Ben Harris, PhD, author of “From Rest Cure to Work Cure” explains, “The physicians, during this time, attributed mental suffering to brain pathology as they excluded emotions, beliefs, and ideas as possible contributors to one’s mental health”, meaning that mental suffering was entirely thought to be pathological (Harris par. 1). American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell developed the rest cure in the late 1800s for the treatment of hysteria,

Hysteria, as stated by Dinwiddie, has been traced back to the Hippocratic School of medicine, perhaps even as far back as ancient Egypt. Hysteria is when psychological conflict is turned into physical symptoms, such as when a patient complains of symptoms for which no clear physical cause. Somatization disorder has often been linked with hysteria in the same ways that hypochondriasis has, however these two diseases are not the same. In the past hypochondriasis was thought to be a somatization disorder, but has since been re-classified as an anxiety disorder by the DSM-IV (Ehrlich, 2013). A somatization disorder is a chronic condition in which a person has physical symptoms involving multiple body parts that have no physical cause, it is currently one of the hardest diseases to diagnose.

It may be hard to imagine how this ridiculous scrutiny of women used to be commonplace. The development and diagnosis of hysteria certainly goes against to the modernistic beliefs of humanistic psychology &

64% of LGBT students in American schools have felt unsafe while at school because of their sexual orientation. If you’re well-versed in the history of civil rights in the United States, you know that LGBT individuals have been discriminated against and attacked in this country for hundreds of years. Only in the summer of 2015 were same-sex marriages legal. Even now, in 2017, most LGBT individuals are not protected from employment and housing discrimination. “Conversion” or “reparative” therapy is still legal in 46 states. Not only is conversion therapy harmful to the patient and their families, it is not effective. It is a violation of child and human rights.

S. Weir Mitchell, as quoted by Jennifer L. Pierce, shared the thought that “hysteria was a woman’s disorder—a psychological manifestation of ‘the emotions rising from the womb’” (Pierce 257). The uterus, or the ‘hystera’ caused the manifestation of hysteria; women during this time with “hysterical” symptoms would be taken by men, for a hysterectomy. A hysterectomy “cured” hysteria along with other symptoms with the complete surgical removal of the uterus. Also, without the female’s knowledge, countless surgeries were made after pregnancies in order to control the “hysterical” women of the time. Spengler mentions that “even though insanity was not exclusively female realm, women were deemed more prone to mental instability than men, and until

Conversion disorder, also known as neurological symptom disorder (NSD), is a mental condition where you have physical symptoms but there is no medical explanation for your condition the problem is all neurological. According to Harvard Health Publications, “The term conversion comes from the idea that psychological distress is being converted into a physical symptom” (‘Conversion disorder guide: Causes, symptoms and treatment options’, n.d.)The term conversion originated from Freud, who believed that anxiety, and unconscious mechanisms, turned into somatic symptoms.

Hysteria is a mental disorder that causes uncontrollable emotions. When Hysteria was first diagnosed, it was something completely different than it was today. In about the 1800s Hysteria was thought of as a disease that the woman's sexual organs were not normal. Hysteria in today’s definition, causes social anxiety because the patient is anxious, and does not know when their next emotional outbreak will be.

The narrator was diagnosed by her husband as having “nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (p. 648). This story shows her mind’s transition from minor symptoms to hallucinations, obsessive behavior, and paranoid tendencies. The hallucinations the narrator experiences adds a supernatural element to the story as she images a woman desperately trying