Not Your Grandmother's Hysteria

Despite the archaic ring to the term "hysteria," the disorder is still afflicting patients in this century. And thanks to the technological advancements of brain imaging, the doctors can more precisely diagnose what is now known as "conversion disorder."

From the New York Times:

Functional neuroimaging technologies like single photon emission computerized tomography, or SPECT, and positron emission tomography, or PET, now enable scientists to monitor changes in brain activity. And although the brain mechanisms behind hysterical illness are still not fully understood, new studies have started to bring the mind back into the body, by identifying the physical evidence of one of the most elusive, controversial and enduring illnesses.

Despite its period of invisibility, hysteria never vanished — or at least that is what many doctors say.

“People who say it is vanished need to come and work in some tertiary hospitals where they will see plenty of patients,” Kasia Kozlowska, a psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia, and the author of a 2005 review of the subject in The Harvard Review of Psychiatry, wrote in an e-mail message.