Fashion sickness

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As Fashion diseases diseases are frequently blurred defined colloquially symptoms understood that a like fashion occur frequently limited space or time. This term is often used in a derogatory and critical way. In this context, the term “fashion” or “embarrassment diagnosis” (especially in the case of somatoform disorders ) is also used.

Uses of terms

So-called fashion diseases often correspond to the lifestyle of a time. According to media scientist Jochen Hörisch , unlike epoch diseases , these are associated with a considerable gain in disease . However, diseases can also appear to occur more frequently because the increased media presence means that their symptoms are assigned to the disease more quickly than usual. One of the first examples of these media-present diseases in the modern western world could be the so-called " railroad sickness ".

In media reports, the Spanish flu was also sometimes belittled as a “fashion disease”: “The fashion disease in Berlin, the Residenza, also in Vienna and Florenza. In Naples, Piacenza, there is influenza everywhere. ”; “Half the city has this fashionable disease, the Spanish flu.” The so-called “ war tremor ” was sometimes referred to as a fashionable disease. In fact, the psychogenic tremor as a result of war-traumatic experiences then occurred rather rarely, while other psychosomatic symptoms increased.

Werner Stangl named as one of the first fashion diagnoses, "the neurasthenia , a disease whose main symptom form a general exhaustion, added to the headaches, anxiety and irritability." Thus the diagnosis would meet the zeitgeist , and was one of the most diagnosed diseases before the First World War. The same is true today for diagnoses such as burnout and leisure sickness (“leisure illness ”). He also sees ADHD and early childhood autism such as Asperger's Syndrome as a danger of becoming a fashion diagnosis.

The medical historian Michael Stolberg did not call the phenomenon a new development. The diagnosis of hysteria in women was widespread until the 19th century . Back then, many doctors would have attributed “typically female” symptoms such as nervousness, sleep disorders or shortness of breath to the fact that the uterus rises in the patient's body (hystéra = uterus) and ultimately leads to suffocation. As a result, many women identified with this diagnosis and supposedly felt on their own bodies "how the organ rushes up their necks".

Diseases that result from general lifestyle habits (e.g. diabetes mellitus ) are referred to as diseases of civilization or diseases of affluence. Although such diseases can be diagnosed more clearly, they are sometimes counted among the fashionable or epochal diseases because of their frequent occurrence.

See also

literature

  • Frank Degler / Christian Kohlroß (eds.): Epochs / Diseases. Constellations of literature and pathology. Röhrig University Press, St. Ingbert 2006. ISBN 978-3861103745 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Various: Duden - German Universal Dictionary , Volume 6, revised and expanded edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim, Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-411-05506-7 (accessed on August 2, 2010): “Mo / de / Krank / heit, die: disease that is widespread in fashion (with imagined or unclear symptoms). "
  2. ^ Rolf Löchel: Fashion and epoch diseases . Retrieved August 2, 2010.
  3. ↑ Ursula Mayr: When therapies don't help. On the psychodynamics of the 'negative therapeutic response'; P. 260; Velcro-Cotta 2001
  4. Jump up ↑ Dance with the Devil: The Enigmatic Spanish Flu ; deutschlandfunk.de of March 4, 2018; accessed on July 16, 2020
  5. ↑ fashion sickness ; DWDS ; accessed on July 16, 2020
  6. ↑ Peter Henningsen, Harald Gündel, et al .: Neuro-Psychosomatics: Basics and Clinic of Neurological Psychosomatics Schattauer Verlag 2006; P. 96
  7. ↑ fashion diagnosis ; accessed on July 16, 2020
  8. ↑ Fashion diseases: I have that too ; Pharmaceutical newspaper of March 11, 2015; accessed on July 16, 2020