Before Ritalin: Children and neurasthenia in the Netherlands

This article is concerned with the history of the neurological disorder that preceded ADHD: 'neurasthenia' or nervousness, conceived of as a functional disease of the nervous system. Around 1900 it appeared on the scene of children's disorders and it disappeared at the time of the pharmacological turn in psychiatry by the late 1960s. In spite of a series of adversary conditions neurasthenia survived. To explain this the author traces the history of neurasthenia and its more popular equivalents through a discursive analysis of Dutch child-rearing literature. The focus is directed at the shifting content of the diagnosis, its symptoms and aetiology and on the advantages for people using this label. Neurasthenia is followed from the early twentieth century when 'weak' or 'oversensitive' nerves were discovered and discussed by experts, through the interwar years when schools were accused of producing 'nervous' children and the disease had to compete with psychoanalytical 'neurosis' and, finally, the immediate post Second World War period when concern for children's mental health increased rapidly and 'nervositas' was one of its major expressions. The conclusion is drawn that childhood neurasthenia as a hereditary disease has been functional for experts, teachers, parents, and children in a variety of ways.