: a condition that is characterized especially by physical and mental exhaustion usually with accompanying symptoms (such as headache and irritability), is of unknown cause but is often associated with depression or emotional stress, and is sometimes considered similar to or identical with chronic fatigue syndrome
Recent Examples on the WebPeabody’s muscular Christianity reflected elite anxieties at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries around a loss of manliness and a spreading neurasthenia compared with the rougher pre-industrial times. Doug Henwood, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019 The fashionable malaise of neurasthenia was only one of the disorders thought to be caused by a depletion of energies. Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 6 July 2018 Then neurasthenia was a fashionable disease, and a lot of writers and artists embraced it with a passion.National Geographic, 19 Aug. 2016 During the second half of the 19th century, neurologists described a condition called neurasthenia, thought to have been brought on by the accelerating pace of modern life. Nitsuh Abebe, New York Times, 18 Apr. 2017 Nineteenth century neurasthenia theories read very similarly.National Geographic, 19 Aug. 2016 The neurasthenia diagnosis affected both in the male and the female population.National Geographic, 19 Aug. 2016 See More
Word History
Etymology
neur- + asthenia, probably after Italian neurastenia
Note: Italian neurastenia (now nevrastenia) appears to have been introduced, in reference to what was taken to be a form of tetanus (tetano nervoso or tetano astenico "nervous" or "asthenic tetanus"), by the Pavia physician Giuseppe Bergamaschi in "Osservazioni medico-pratiche sul tetano," Giornale di medicina pratica, edited by Valeriano Luigi Brera, fascicolo 29 (settembre-ottobre 1816). Bergamaschi's neurastenia is cited as "neurostenia" in John Mason Good's The Study of Medicine, 2nd edition, vol. 4 (London, 1825), p. 353. The word was reintroduced to refer to a psychological disorder by both the American psychiatrist E.H. Van Deusen ("Observations on a form of nervous prostration, (neurasthenia,) culminating in insanity," American Journal of Insanity, April, 1869, vol. 45, pp. 445-61) and the American neurologist George Miller Beard ("Neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, new series vol. 3, no. 13, April 29, 1869, pp. 217-21).