I have always hated the term. Reason being is that although maybe technically correct, it has always had bad connotations in my part of the world anyway. How many times did I hear the hushed voices say about victims "did you hear she had a nervous breakdown" as if these people had jsut committed a heinious crime. After hearing this I would look at these people (when I was a kid) and be scared of them. The term instilled fear in me, gossip in others, condemnation for some. I do not ever remember the term being useful to me, a commoner. When I started to have anxiety problems and headed toward this "nervous breakdown" I was so very fearful because of the term. I would now become a subject for hushed voices.
Of course my subjective perception of the term was not clinically correct, but I would venture that many shared my experience. I have found it much easier to grasp the term "anxiety disorder" and even dp/dr than nervous breakdown.
Everybody has anxiety. All can relate.
The new and progressive attitudes toward "mental illness" have helped dispel the fears of terms. I feel "nervous breakdown" needs to go down the road as obsolete and along with it the historic connotations that a few generations had toward it. Come up with a new term that does not have the baggage. An equally descriptive term, but without the baggage. There are many terms in all avenues of life in the last thirty years that have been replaced due to awareness of these sensitivities. (e.g. crippled, retard, lunatic, epileptic, foreigner, housewife etc.) When these were replaced with more PC terms, the definitions may have been similiar but the historic connotations and stigma left. I feel the same about "nervous breakdown".
jft
