Health Care

By: David Jones

Hysteria is a neurotic over-reaction to an experience or situation. You are not hysterical in the medical sense of the word if you normally react to moments of stress by weeping uncontrollably or shrieking. Many people tend to over-dramatize their feelings, and they are not mentally ill because of this tendency. The illness known as hysteria, sometimes called a conversion reaction, occurs when someone (who mayor may not be normally "highstrung") reacts to severe stress by developing physical symptoms that cannot be traced to physical factors. Such people do not realize that their symptoms are caused by hysteria. They, and usually their families and friends, simply assume they have been afflicted with a genuine physical disorder. The problem is often of a kind that helps the person with hysteria to escape from a stressful situation. For example, if you see a terrible accident where you work, you may develop a weakness of the legs that prevents you from leaving home the next day or even for much longer. Or a total loss of memory (amnesia) may follow an accident that you yearn to forget.

Do not confuse hysteria with psychosomatic illness . Psychosomatic illnesses, though they are affected by stress, are actual physical disorders. Hysteria is purely imaginary illness.

What are The Symptoms?

The hysterical reaction may be fairly mild (for instance, vague pains, weakness, or dizziness) or extremely severe (paralysis of the limbs, or sudden blindness). Less commonly, there may be loss of memory. Diseases symptoms associated with hysteria are difficult to diagnose, especially since the ill person will deny that there is an emotional problem.

What Should be Done?

If you suspect that the disability of someone in your family is due to a neurotic reaction to some experience or situation, consult your physician. Whether or not your suspicion is correct, never accuse anyone of faking symptoms. Hysterical people are ill and often overly sensitive. Because hysteria is extremely difficult to diagnose, your doctor will probably want to arrange for in hospital tests to rule out the possibility of a physical cause of the symptoms. If the cause appears to be hysteria, the person will probably be referred to a specialist.

What is The Treatment?

The goal of treatment is to discover the underlying problem and help the person solve it. No medical treatment can cure symptoms of hysteria, so everything depends on sympathetic, patient psychotherapy. The only drug that may be prescribed for hysteria is a tranquilizer to help the person relax while the underlying problem is being uncovered and the symptoms gradually eliminated. In rare cases a treatment known as "abreaction," which does involve drugs, may be advised. It works best for people whose hysteria is due to a single, severe emotional shock.

A person undergoing abreaction must lie down in a quiet, darkened room. To over­come resistance to discussing a painful subject, the person is put into a hypnotic state either by breathing ether or being injected with a special drug. Then, when fully relaxed, he or she is asked to recall in detail diseases treatment the incident that triggered the hysterical reaction. Just reliving a suppressed experience in this way often removes symptoms of hysteria. No body knows why this happens, although there are a number of interesting theories.

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