The term ‘nervous breakdown’ is the layman’s term to describe when a person has reached the point of his limitations and they literally breakdown emotionally. This condition means that the person is no longer able to cope up with his work, his life and eventually the person would just stop trying to get back to his feet.
The following are factors which could contribute for a person to have a breakdown:
- distressing life events
- presence of other medical disorders or diseases
- the person’s biological or genetic make up
- the combination of all these factors
Psychiatrists and other professionals never use ‘nervous breakdown’ but they use depressive or anxious collapse instead. Collapse can be a symptom for a much bigger range of underlying problems like depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, manic depression or even schizophrenia.