Many patients who come to the clinic tell us themselves that they have seen this problem in other departments and that the physician diagnosed it as neurosis. In this country, there is a broadening of this diagnosis. What exactly are the manifestations of neurasthenia?
Next I will talk to you about neurasthenia so that you can see if you have neurasthenia or not.
Neurosis is a neurological disorder in which brain and somatic functions are mainly weakened. It is characterized by easy mental excitement but easy fatigue, often accompanied by emotional symptoms such as tension, worry, irritability and other symptoms of physiological disorders such as muscle tension pain and sleep disorders. These symptoms cannot be attributed to brain or body diseases or other mental illnesses. The onset of the disease is often slow and the course of the disease fluctuates. The disease is often preceded by persistent tension and stress.
Etiology
Most scholars believe that a combination of qualitative, somatic, psychological, social and environmental factors is the cause of this disease.
The prevalence is highest in brain workers.
Clinical manifestations
I. Symptoms of brain weakness
1, easy to excite Associations and memories increase, the content of thinking is chaotic and meaningless, making people feel distressed; inattention, easily disturbed by irrelevant stimuli; sensory threshold is reduced, sensitive to external stimuli such as sound and light, emotional irritability.
2, easy fatigue The main characteristics of neurasthenia patients, mainly mental fatigue, often accompanied by emotional symptoms, may or may not be accompanied by physical fatigue. Fatigue has the following characteristics: ① fatigue is often accompanied by a bad state of mind, such as worry, tension, and even bitterness, depression. It cannot be relieved by rest and is not effective by taking nourishing supplements, but disappears with the improvement of the state of mind; ② fatigue is often situational: for example, yawning when reading a book, eyes looking at the book, but the mind is disorganized and drowsy; but there is no fatigue when watching one’s favorite TV; ③ fatigue is often diffuse: patients often feel tired in everything, unless they are doing something they love to do and can do it competently; ④ fatigue is not Fatigue is not accompanied by a decrease in desire and motivation: not only do their desire and motivation not decrease, but they have the feeling of “having more than enough energy”, and while feeling fatigue, they are often accompanied by mental excitement and active desire, and they often feel distressed that they cannot realize their ambitions because of their illness.
Second, the emotional symptoms are mainly worry, irritability and tension.
The above emotional states can also be seen in healthy people. It is generally believed that these emotional symptoms must have the following characteristics to be considered pathological: (1) the patient feels distressed or affects the patient’s social function and seeks help; (2) the patient feels difficulty in self-control; (3) the intensity and duration of emotions are not proportional to life events or situations.
Anxiety and depression are generally less severe and less persistent in patients with neurological disorders, and some patients can have no depression at all.
Third, psychophysiological symptoms
Patients with neurasthenia often have a large number of somatic symptoms, and no evidence of pathological changes can be found by various examinations.
These symptoms are actually a manifestation of physiological dysfunction, mostly related to the patient’s psychological state. The most common ones are sleep disorders and tension headaches. Sleep disorders are mostly characterized by difficulty falling asleep and waking up easily. Tension headache: The most typical description is “head like a tight band, swelling of the head”, often persistent, but not severe, and the location is not fixed, depending on the discomfort of the whole head.
It can be accompanied by dizziness, typically described as “grogginess and fogginess all day long”, and the patient does not feel dizzy, but just feels a lack of clarity and agility in thinking, and “craves a sense of freshness after a water bath”.
In fact, in many countries, neurasthenia is not generally used as a diagnostic category. Many cases diagnosed as neurasthenia in the past meet the current criteria for depressive disorders or anxiety disorders. However, for some cases, the description of neurasthenia is more appropriate than any other neurotic syndrome. The need for a diagnosis of neurosis requires the exclusion of other types of neurosis, depression, and schizophrenia. Symptoms of neurosis associated with a somatic disorder can only be diagnosed as a neurotic syndrome. As can be seen, the above are only common clinical manifestations of the disease, plus the lack of specificity of neurasthenia symptoms, which are seen in almost all mental and physical diseases, and whether it is neurasthenia or not needs to be analyzed by a specialist according to the specific situation of each patient.
About the disease, I would like to say to patients and their families that
1, patients can choose relaxation methods such as qigong, yoga techniques, biofeedback training to relax themselves and effectively relieve tension.
2, although no uniquely effective drugs have been found so far, patients can choose medication based on the characteristics of their symptoms, mainly anti-anxiety drugs, to improve their mood and improve their quality of life.
3.Physical exercise, travel retreats and adjustment of unreasonable study and work styles are also some good ways to get rid of the worrying situation, improve the tension and relieve mental stress.
4, although the patient’s various tests are normal, but, the patient does have the above feelings, the patient’s family more need to give them support and encouragement, to avoid new distress to the patient due to family problems, to reduce the patient’s anxiety and depression, to improve the patient’s confidence in treatment.