Nervous Breakdown

This site seems to have a lot of information on trauma: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/emotional-and-psychological-trauma.htm .

Is your character falling apart after a specific event or occurrence? Is he or she triggering back to an old trauma?

You might try researching "major depressive episode." That might get you what you're looking for.

Or even psychotic break.

If you want to ratchet up the tension when this character melts down, have someone ponder the question of whether or not the subject should be considered a danger to themselves or others... That could shift the perception of your character a fair degree.

Basically during a so called "nervous breakdown" a person stops functioning in almost every possible way. That really puts it all into focus. It's like until then they've been carrying on with their normal life (or trying to) and then suddenly it all just unravels. I would say that almost out of the blue the person would start acting strange (having over the top reactions over normal day to day issues) and then simply being unable to do anything but lie in bed and cry. Not washing, not eating and refusing to talk to anyone are other typical symptoms..... Usually this would happen after some major, shattering event which could even have taken place years before but which the character was unable to process until now

I tend to think of everyone as having a built-in "cope button" - most of the time, both in tough situations and in everyday ups and downs, when you start to feel stressed or nervous or something happens that you need to handle with grace and calm, you press your cope button and you carry on... you cope. A nervous breakdown is when your cope button no longer works. You CANNOT COPE. Not with your job, not with the people around you, not with making simple decisions that you otherwise wouldn't break a sweat over, not even with something like a dripping tap that would be just a mild annoyance to anyone with a fully-functional cope button. Crying a lot was mentioned, but sometimes that's too much to deal with, too. Sometimes you just stare into space or sleep a lot. It's different from depression, in my experience - your nerves are shot, for whatever reason, and you simply cannot deal with the world around you for a while. It does eventually pass if you're given the chance to rest and heal.

So basically, to me, nervous breakdown = complete loss of coping skills. If that helps.

I live in San Francisco and there was a man who worked as an acrobat in a local circus troupe who unfortunately had a very public mental breakdown. He ended up taking his clothes off in the BART station (it's like a subway/undergound), doing back-flips and splits until police arrived. He later said he thought he was in a performance and that none of it was real. I suppose this would be a very extreme case, but it's one version nonetheless.

"Nervous breakdown" was a term I heard a lot as a kid and a teenager. (1960's-70's) My older sister had friends who had this happen, and today they'd be diagnosed as having depression or other more clinical mental issues.

I heard the term used less and less as I got older. I think it was sort of a 'catchall' or generic term for a wide variety of mental disorders or problems.

Not a doctor here, just saying ...

In modern day, medical professionals don't call them 'nervous breakdowns anymore'.

Depending on the situation in your story, it would be called a panic attack, major depressive episode, anxiety disorder, or 'onset of symptoms'.

I think you want a panic attack.

Panic attacks can be part of an ongoing disorder, like an anxiety or panic disorder, or they can occur by themselves as the result of major stress--losing a job, a friend getting into a car accident, etc. If you want your character to fall apart without diagnosing them with any major issues, like depression, this is what you want.

I have GAD, a history of OCD, and have experienced many, many panic attacks. Your character is probably going to be on edge for a while--at least a day--before the attack really hits. They may be snappy, and they'll probably be ruminating on a few issues: their rapid heartbeat must be abnormal, should they see a doctor? Or: God, they need to get ready for that interview, if they don't they're going to fail, and they'll lose their house, and their mother will disown them, and, and--etc.

The panic attack itself can manifest in many ways. Some are more subtle--your character might think they're having a heart attack and drive themselves to the hospital for treatment, only to discover that they're just wigging out. These panic attacks are the kind that your character's friends and family may not even notice, because all the action is internal.

Some panic attacks are very, very noticeable. There may be crying and screaming, stomping the floor, hitting the wall. Your character will probably say a lot of things they'll regret later, and they may break a windshield. It happens.

Panic attacks always, in my experience, feel all-consuming to the person experiencing them. Their heart is beating out of their chest, their thoughts are racing, they have never cried harder and they are on the edge of an ending world--they're probably dying, for sure. The character probably won't realize that they're being irrational, but even if they do, this may do nothing to ease their symptoms.

A single panic attack, for me, typically lasts upwards of an hour, but you can have multiple within the same week, or even within the same day. The physical symptoms will go away, but after a panic attack you're going to be more depressed, more anxious, and whatever external stressors triggered the attack will need to be addressed, if not resolved, if you want the character to have a meaningful recovery.

I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1884995683/?tag=absowrit-20

I had a nervous breakdown, or panic attack, at work a little over a year ago. I have anxiety disorder and have bouts of depression. That day I went into work, I don't remember what pushed me over the edge, but I started bawling and I couldn't stop for like an hour or two. I tried to work, but it was pointless and I was sent home. I was having heart palpitations bad that day, so those could have been a trigger. I went to the doctor and he prescribed me Xanax to take when needed. Lately I take a pill everyday, sometimes two, to control my palpitations. They make you feel like you're about to have a heart attack. Stupid chemical imbalances, anyway.

My youngest daughter was in her sophomore year of college when she packed a suitcase one night and tried to move in to a strange house. the people who lived there were frightened. They thought she was on drugs and called the police. The police took her to a hospital--no drugs in her system so they could not arrest her--thank god. The hospital released her and called us to come and get her. In the meantime she broke all the upstairs windows in her sister's house.

She was making no sense so we took her back to the hospital. The hospital advised us to take her to a mental hospital and set up an admission for a hospital near us. We lived across the state and the 4 hour drive was a nightmare. My husband drove. I rode in the back seat with her. She had no idea who I was and fought me when she wasn't crying her heart out. We had the child locks on the car doors because she wanted to jump out. It was the worst night of my life. My poor husband was in shock; the first time I had ever seen him cry.

This was a kid who played the violin, loved to be in plays and had lots of friends. She never drank or took drugs. She could read on a seventh grade level in second grade. No health problems until then. At the hospital the diagnosis was bi-polar, later it was changed to schizo affective bi-polar. She was experiencing a severe manic episode most likely triggered by anxiety and lack of sleep. We had no idea that this condition even existed, although my grandmother had suffered several "nervous breakdowns" in the fifties. Our doctors said that grandma's nervous breakdowns were probably really manic episodes and that she was not schizophrenic, although that was the diagnosis at the time. --s6

Fruitbat said:

A quick falling apart with non-stop crying and other obvious signs of "losing it," or a longer period of being on the edge, or what?

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The noticeable event might happen suddenly, in the observation of others, but a mental collapse of this sort, however you define it psychologically, is almost never "quick". It's usually the result of accumulated stress and mental/emotional difficulties over a long period of time. And the "breakdown" might not even be sudden; it just might seem so, by being noticed.

caw

I've experienced what would probably have been called a "nervous breakdown." For me it was a part of severe depression, combined with external life stressors. I was in my fourth year of university, and I'd had a pretty rough year. The year before had been great--year abroad, lots of travel, first love. Then, right at the height of that, I got really ill (I have a chronic illness, but it had never been that big a deal). I spent the next few months really struggling with my (physical) health, but wanted to finish my degree. That fall was just awful. I was disliking the university and location before the year abroad, and coming back to it afterwards was even worse. That first love was still ongoing, but it was long-distance, and also a stupid "not friendship-not relationship" thing. My dad was four hours drive away; my mom was across the country. My two best friends there were a couple, which inevitably left me out. My health was still iffy. I was trying to figure out what to do next--I'd always planned on grad school in the UK, but suddenly my health was a factor. I don't have good self-esteem at the best of times. And I have a strong family history of depression. I plummeted.

The actual "nervous breakdown bit" happened in November. My health was getting worse but I couldn't deal with facing it and didn't admit it. I'd just started anti-depressants, but they take a few weeks to kick in. At that point the depression was so bad it could take me an hour to work myself up to getting dressed. My "not-quite-boyfriend" had actually been amazing, incredibly kind and supportive. So when he told me flat-out, "there's no chance of a relationship while there's distance, and p.s. there's someone else".... it pushed me over the edge. I spent the weekend crying and crying. It wasn't just the heartbreak, though; it was the feeling my life had well and truly gone to pieces. I had an essay due on maybe the Wednesday. I've always been a terrific student, As and A pluses and firsts in the UK. With everything else going on in my life I was already incredibly behind on this paper, but I had enough to get something out of.

I could not do it. I spent hours and hours unable to write a sentence. In history, my favourite subject, on a topic that interested me. It was really frightening. I wasn't thinking very rationally either, so when I couldn't do it the night before I figured, well, class isn't until 2, if I wake up at 8 that's at least 5 hours to work on it, papers don't usually take me more than 5 hours, I can do that. Of course the morning was even worse. At one point I actually lay on the floor crying. Sometime before class I wrote some message to my professor apologizing, flat-out saying I was struggling with issues of physical and mental health, which I of course wrote through nearly hysterical tears. I had (other) professors seriously encouraging me to apply to Oxford, and I couldn't write a paragraph of my paper.

I actually don't remember much of that week. I don't think I went to any of that particular class, and I doubt I managed many other ones (before that fall, I'd missed maybe one class in three years of university). I'm pretty sure I barely ate. Luckily my dad was "only" four hours away, and I went home for the weekend, and anyway the breakdown had impacted my physical health pretty dramatically too and I ended up in the hospital for a couple weeks for that, which got me leeway on the school stuff. I hope I would have had the same understanding for the mental issues, but it's hard to know, even these days. I've written papers while very ill before, though, and got top marks. That time I'd just fallen apart.

So, well, in brief-- for me, I'd say it was the combination of exterior events, emotional vulnerability, and untreated depression. I was on the edge for a couple months before that, certainly. I've since experienced worse exterior events, with lots of health issues, unhappiness, and lack of control in my life, and certainly struggled, but never fallen apart like that again. The ultimate break-up with that fellow was bad (it went on two more years...agh), but my state was nothing like it was during this breakdown. I've been on anti-depressants all that time, which I suppose is treatment, though they weren't prescribed for that specifically.

There's definitely different angles to the "nervous breakdown" label, but, anyway, that's my depression-based one!