Soldiers who deserted their post could be executed even if they had a medical excuse, but officers who had neurasthenia were not executed. Current opinion
This concept remained popular well into the 20th century, eventually coming to be seen as a behavioural rather than physical condition, with a diagnosis that excluded postviral syndromes. Neurasthenia has largely been abandoned as a medical diagnosis. The ICD-10 system of the World Health Organization categorizes neurasthenia under "F48 - Other neurotic disorders".One modern opinion of neurasthenia is that it was actually dysautonomia, an "imbalance" of the autonomic nervous system.Barbara Ehrenreich, restating Jamess view, considers that neurasthenia was caused by the Calvinist gloom, and it was helped by the New Thought, through replacing the "puritanical demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing" with a more hopeful faith. In Asia
The medical term neurasthenia is translated as Chinese shenjing shuairuo (simplified Chinese: 神经衰弱; traditional Chinese: 神經衰弱; pinyin: shénjīng shuāiruò; Cantonese Yale: sàhngīng sēuiyeuhk) or Japanese shinkei-suijaku (神経衰弱), both of which also translate the common term nervous breakdown. This loanword combines shenjing (神經) or shinkei (神経)  "nerve(s); nervous" and shuairuo or suijaku (衰弱) "weakness; feebleness; debility; asthenia". Despite being omitted by the American Psychiatric Associations DSM in 1980, neurasthenia is listed in an appendix as the culture-bound syndrome shenjing shuairuo as well as appearing in the ICD-10. The condition is thought to persist in Asia as a culturally acceptable diagnosis that avoids the social stigma of a diagnosis of mental disorder.
In Japan, shinkei-suijaku is treated with Morita therapy involving mandatory rest and isolation, followed by progressively more difficult work, and a resumption of a previous social role. The diagnosis is sometimes used as a disguise for serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and mood disorders.In China, traditional Chinese medicine describes shenjingshuairuo as a depletion of qi "vital energy" and reduction of functioning in the  wuzang "five internal organs" (heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys). The modern CCMD classifies it as a persistent mental disorder diagnosed with three of these five symptoms: "weakness symptoms, emotional symptoms, excitement symptoms, tension-induced pain, and sleep disturbances" not caused by other conditions. Arthur Kleinman described Chinese neurasthenia as a "biculturally patterned illness experience (a special form of somatization), related to depression or other diseases or to culturally sanctioned idioms of distress and psychosocial coping." See also
Combat stress reaction
Newyorkitis
Placebo effect
Psychogenic disease

References
Further reading
Brown, EM (1980). "An American Treatment for the American Nervousness". American Association of the History of Medicine. Archived from the original on 2008-09-07. Retrieved 2008-09-11. Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke (2001). Cultures of Neurasthenia: From Beard to the First World War (Clio Medica 63) (Clio Medica). Rodopi Bv Editions. ISBN 978-90-420-0931-8. Gosling, F. G. Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870-1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Weir Mitchell, S (1884). Fat and Blood: an essay on the treatment of certain types of Neurasthenia and hysteria. Philadelphia: J. D. Lippincott & Co. Retrieved 2008-09-11. Farmer A, Jones I, Hillier J, Llewelyn M, Borysiewicz L, Smith A (October 1995).