Heartsickness

"Dear Jim: I have been thinking the whole thing over and I now see that it wasn't wise for us to be married. I don't want to hurt you, but. . . ."

A serviceman's wife writing thus to her husband probably suffers from a condition whose other symptoms include severe depressions, colitis, heart palpitations, diarrhea, frequent headaches. Described as a "new disease" by Dr. Jacob Sergi Kasanin, chief psychiatrist at San Francisco's Mt. Zion Hospital, this psychoneurotic condition by last week had become so prevalent among service wives that San Francisco psychiatrists were begging county authorities for the use of hospital wards to treat their patients. An estimated 2,500 women in San Francisco alone have undergone treatment for psychoneurosis during the past 18 months.

Says Dr. Kasanin, who maintains a clinic for the rehabilitation of discharged servicemen as well as one for the treatment of servicemen's wives: women are paying the same war penalties as men, many of whom crack up long before they reach combat. Women who have followed their husbands to embarkation ports often find themselves spiritually stranded. Many stay simply because they somehow feel closer to their husbands there.

Those women who, like Penelope, have the sense to stay home or go back to it and keep busy, preferably at a war job, are apt to find adjustment easier. But others, particularly those recently married or childless, often develop pathological reactions in the form of physiological disturbances, resentment against the husband, inability to recall the husband's face or to sense the reality of the married state, vague fears of infidelity. Most susceptible are "orally demanding" women, those requiring constant assurances of their husband's devotion.

Many such neurotic women find escape in throwing off marriage ties, becoming floozies or barflies. Many find a complete cure in receiving their husband's first letter, or even his allotment check, either of which can serve to reaffirm the idea of marriage in the sick wife's mind. But under simple psychotherapeutic treatments, says Dr. Kasanin, "most cases get over their depressions very quickly."

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