Definition
The terms "nervous breakdown" and "mental breakdown" have not been formally defined through a diagnostic system such as the DSM-IV or ICD-10, and are nearly absent from current scientific literature regarding mental illness. Although "nervous breakdown" does not necessarily have a rigorous or static definition, surveys of laypersons suggest that the term refers to a specific acute time-limited reactive disorder, involving symptoms such as anxiety or depression, usually precipitated by external stressors.
Specific cases are sometimes described as a "breakdown" only after a person becomes unable to function in day-to-day life.
Read more about this topic: Mental Breakdown
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this—”devoted and obedient.” This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.”
—Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)
“Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“It is very hard to give a just definition of love. The most we can say of it is this: that in the soul, it is a desire to rule; in the spirit, it is a sympathy; and in the body, it is but a hidden and subtle desire to possess—after many mysteries—what one loves.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)