AyurvedGuru

Stop going Hysterical
Dr. Suprabha Das

Hysteria is an extremely complex mental phenomenon witch may take varying forms. In certain types the disorder may result from some situation to witch one is unable to adapt oneself such as marriage, engagement, position of responsibility, the death of relations or loss love. Factors involving the sexual life in some way are frequently present. This article gives Ayurvedic view of hysteria with its management.

Hysteria is an obsolete medical term that is still used colloquially to refer to a state of extreme fear or emotion and the resultant irrational behavior. The term was originally employed to describe woman who acted irrationally due to a supposed disturbance of the uterus. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) replaced the diagnosis “hysterical neurosis, conversion type” with “conversion disorder.”

Hysteria is a mental and nervous disorder arising from intense anxiety. It is characterized by a lack of control over acts and emotion and by sudden conclusive seizures and emotional outbursts. Hysteria often results from repressed mental conflict.

Hysteria appears in both sexes, but is far more common in young woman of the age group between 14 and 25 years because of their natural sensitivity. In many cases Hysteria tends to occur around the period of adolescence and becomes less frequent after the age of 25. It is uncommon after the age of forty- five years.

Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often caused by multiple events in one’s past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part or most commonly on an imagined problem with that body part (disease is a common complaint. And see also Body dysmorphic disorder and Hypochondriasis. People who are “hysterical” often lose self control due to the overwhelming fear.

Psychiatrists and other physicians have a in theory given up the use of “hysteria”, replacing it with more euphemistic terms that are essentially synonyms. These include “psychosomatic”, “functional”, “nonorganic”, “psychogenic”, and “medically unexplained”. In1980 the American Psychiatric Association officially changed the diagnosis of “hysterical neurosis, conversion type” to “conversion disorder”. Hysteria also has significant overlap with the diagnostion term summarization disorder and with summarization disorder and with somatoform disorders in general.

The word hysteria is derived from the Greek for “uterus”. According to ancient medical thought, women who refrained from sexual intercourse for a prolonged period suffered from mental disturbance as a result of the uterus retreating into the body and compressing the other organs. This theory was revived in 19th century medicine and again in the 1920s through the influence of Freud’s psychological theories. Induced orgasm was used as treatment for supposedly hysterical women. The notion of so-called female hysteria has since been discredited.

In modern psychological thought, there are two types of hysteria: somatoform and dissociative. Somatoform hysteria is characterized by physical, or psychosomatic, symptoms. One example is conversion disorder, in which neurological symptoms such as paralysis pain, and fits are present with no neurological cause. Other examples include body dysmorphic disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and hypochondria. Patients with somatoform hysteria are not faking their illnesses; rather, the symtoms have a psychological, or inorganic, cause instead of a biological one.

Dissociative hysteria is characterized by a fugue state, otherwise known as amnesia, in which the patient experiences a loss of identity to some degree. Memory loss and changes in personality are common symtoms. Like somatoform hysteria, a fugue state is not intentional evasion, but rather an actual loss of recall due to psychological stress or trauma.

Current psychiatric theory holds that hysteria is the body’s attempt to deal with psychological distress. There may be a benefit to the patient, such as avoidance of whatever is causing the distress; i.e. one becomes too sick to continue working at a stressful job or living on one’s own. Sometimes, however there is no apparent benefit; for example, a person experiencing symptoms of poisoning out of the mistaken belief that he or she has been poisoned.

Freudian psychoanalytic theory attributed hysterical symptoms to the subconscious mind’s attempt to protect the patient from psychic stress. Subconscious motives include primary gain, in which the symptom directly relieves the stress (as when a patient coughs to release energy pent up from keeping a secret),and secondary gain, in which the symptom provides an independent advantage such as staying home from a hated job. More recent critics have noted the possibility of tertiary gain, when a patient is induced subconsciously to display a symptom because of the desires of other (as when a controlling husband enjoys the docility of his sick wife). There need be no gain at all, however, in a hysterical symptom. A child playing hockey may fall and for several hours believe he is unable to move, because he has recently heard of a famous hockey player who fell and broke his neck.

Jungian psychologist Laurie Layton Schapira explored what she labels a “ Cassandra Complex” suffered by those traditionally diagnosed with hysteria, denoting a tendency for those with hysteria to be disbelieved or dismissed when relating the facticity of their experiences to others. [Laurie Layton Schapira, The Cassandra Complex: Living With Disbelief: A Modern Perspective on Hysteria (1988)] Based on clinical experience, she delineates three factors which constitute the Cassandra complex in hysterics: (a). dysfunctional relationships with social manifestations of rationality, order, and reason, leading to; (b). emotional or physical suffering, particularly in the form of somatic, often gynecological complaints, and (c). being “disbelieved” or dismissed when attempting to relate the facticity of these experiences to others.

Symptom of Hysteria

A wide range of symptom of Hysteria are regarded as hysterical The onset of hysterical attacks may be sudden, provoked especially by strong feelings or may be heralded over a period of several hours by periodontal features. The main symptoms of Hysteria include-

· Inappropriate elation or sadness,

· Crying without cause,

· Almost conclusive laughter,

· Deep signing, cramps in the limbs,

· Mild rumblings in the belly and sense of constriction in the throat.

The symptoms of hysteria are of two degrees. In the first degree, the patient may feel heaviness in the limbs, more severe cramps, strong feeling of ascending abdominal constriction, continual sighing’s, difficulty in breathing, constriction in the chest, palpitations, feeling of a foreign body lodged in the throat, swelling of the neck and of the jugular veins, suffocation, headache, clenched teeth, generalized and voluntary tensing of muscles of locomotion. The patient remains conscious during paroxysms. The convulsions are usually milder and occur more often during the bending and extending of limbs.

In the second degree, additional symptoms, besides the preceding once, are noticeable and these may include wild and painful cries, incomplete loss of consciousness, enormously swollen neck, violent and tumultuous heart beats, involuntary locomotor muscle contraction, frightening generalized convulsions, violent movement and frequent spitting. Sometimes the patient jumps about on his or her bed and at other times adopt almost titanic postures. The attack may last several hours. There may be prompt return of consciousness immediately after the convulsions.

The psychical symptoms include a weakness of the will, a caving for love and sympathy and a tendency to emotional instability. Hysterical people tend to react too readily to suggestion and through this suggestibility they are swayed greatly by their surroundings. The morbid exaggerated moods lead to impulsive conduct which may often seem irrational. Such people are liable to be much misunderstood and misjudged. At times there may be much absent-mindedness and loss of memory about events or for definite periods. If this mental dissociation is severe, one may develop hysterical wandering attacks, a state of double consciousness or dual personality.

Hysterical trances may last for days or weeks. Here the patient seems to be in a deep sleep, but the muscles are not usually relaxed. In the most severe instance of this, the heart’s action and breathing may be scarcely apparent that death may be suspected and the person buried alive. Somnambulism or sleep walking and catalepsy, where limbs remain in any position in which they are placed, are other hysterical states.

Causes of Hysteria>/h3>

The most common causes of hysteria are sexual excess or sexual repression, perverted habits of thought and idleness. Heredity plays an important part in its causation. A nervous family, taint and faulty emotional training, when young, are predisposing causes of hysteria. The emotional shocks may have been caused by mental or physical factors such as mental strain, strees, fear, worry, depression, traumatism, masturbation and prolonged sickness.

Hysteria is an extremely complex mental phenomenon which may take varying forms. In certain types the disorder may result from some situation to which one is unable to adapt oneself such as marriage, engagement, position of responsibility, the death of relations or loss of love. Factors involving the sexual life in some way are frequently present.

A number of studies have indicated a possible connection betweenily sterical symptoms and organic brain disease. A patient with epilepsy has often been found to get hysterical attacks. Drug intoxication is another organic brain disease closely associated with hysteria.

Causes & Symptom

Women are generally the victims of this disorder which occurs in the young age, particularly to those who cannot satiate their sex hunger but the symptoms disappear soon after marriage in most of the cases. It has no relation to sex disorders, rather mental disturbance is a predominating cause. There is no froth at the month (as in epilepsy), the patient falls to the ground without shrieking sound, and slips into coma rather gradually. If there is no unconsciousness, the patient wails.

Corrective and Preventive measure

· Remove the cause of constipation.

· Flatulence, indigestion should be prevented by taking lemon juice, cumin, black salt, fried asafetida (Heeng).

· Attend to menstrual complaints, if any.

· Remove cause of mental tension and agony.

· Avoid reading (viewing) listening to such books, magazines, movies, audio cassettes or playing records which ignite libido.

· Take only nutritious and balanced diet but avoid such foods as cause constipation, or loose motions, flatulence, dyspepsia.

· Take Shankhpushpi, Brahmi, Muktapishti, Suvama Bhasma, Makardwaj or praval Pishti etc to support and sustain action of heart, after consulting your doctor.

· During the attack drop onion juice (2-3 drops) in each nostril/ inhale camphor, naushadar and lime mixed compound: splash cold water on the face or massage ghee over forehead.

· Use onion, garlic, asafoetide, black salt, balvach, lemon etc as essential ingredients with food.

· Use balvach or Brahmi, or still better vrihat vata Chintaniani Ras as per your physician’s advice.

· Marjara Kasturi 100mg per dose may be taken with unequal quantity of ghee and honey or extract Guice) of brahmi leaves. These may be given with either of the said vehicles.

No medician can prove effective unless the underlying cause has been singled out. Take the patient into confidence, reassure her of quick recovery, build up confidence, provide congenial and healthy environs.