Ep 10. History of Hysteria

From the uterus, to witchcraft, hypnotism and more, we go through the history of what unexplainable symptoms have been blamed on and how they've been explained through history all the way up to more modern day classifications like Briquette's syndrome, somatoform, conversion, or functional disorders. We tease apart risk factors and other patterns that have been identified to lead to symptoms commonly labelled as ‘hysteria’, and the resulting biases that have carried through into modern medicine towards patients with these types of presentations. This episode is a somewhat lighter, funny change of pace from the pain education heavy start and continues to dive into why hard to treat patients with difficult to explain symptoms have struggled to be taken seriously - since the beginning of time.

References:

[1] C. Tasca, M. Rapetti, M. G. Carta, and B. Fadda, “Women and hysteria in the history of mental health,” Clin. Pract. Epidemiol. Ment. Health, vol. 8, pp. 110–119, Oct. 2012.

[2] “A treatise on hysteria,” Med. Chir. Rev., vol. 13, no. 25, pp. 30–39, Jul. 1830.

[3] H. Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum - The Hammer of Witches. DigiCat, 2022.

[4] R. A. Kallivayalil and V. P. Punnoose, “Understanding and managing somatoform disorders: Making sense of non-sense,” Indian J. Psychiatry, vol. 52, no. Suppl 1, pp. S240-5, Jan. 2010.

[5] J. Katz, B. N. Rosenbloom, and S. Fashler, “Chronic Pain, Psychopathology, and DSM-5 Somatic Symptom Disorder,” Can. J. Psychiatry, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 160–167, Apr. 2015.

[6] P. Wall, “Pain: The science of suffering,” Jun. 1999.

[7] S. A. Nordhoff, “KINETIC THERAPEUTICS IN GYNECOLOGY OR THURE BRANDT’S SYSTEM,” JAMA, vol. XXIV, no. 11, pp. 389-393., 1895.

[8] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Oedipus complex,” Mar. 2024.

[9] B. Pelz and Herkimer Community College, “Introduction to Somatoform Disorders,” in Abnormal Psychology, Open SUNY Textbooks, 2017.

[10] World Health Organization., “International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems,” no. 11th, 2019.