Lovesickness

Is it for real? Can it be cured?

Mary falls in love regularly, breaks up regularly and then takes to bed in deep depression, pulling the covers over her head and eating chocolates for several days. She has twice tried suicide. Mary's problem: she is extremely sensitive to rejection and lashes out at lovers for the smallest slight. That may not strike many doctors as a specific medical ailment. But Manhattan Psychiatrist Donald Klein diagnoses Mary's condition as a typical case of hysteroid dysphoria, a.k.a. "lovesickness." What's more, Klein thinks he has a cure.

Hysteroid dysphoria (literally meaning "hysteria-like discomfort") was considered last year for inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual, but was rejected for lack of evidence. Klein, director of research for the New York State Psychiatric Institute, is convinced that lovesickness is real enough. Says he: "These people, mostly women, are not true depressives or manic-depressives. They are so vulnerable that they are driven to repeat their love cycles over and over."

Klein and his colleagues have found that psychotherapy and the conventional antidepressants are rarely effective with the lovesick. But an 18-month study of ten patients, all women, showed that talk therapy combined with antidepressants called MAO (their chemical initials) inhibitors could shake them out of despair. Indeed, when these women were switched to placebos, five of them showed many of their old symptoms. Now Klein is seeking a $30,000 grant from New York State's Health Research Council for a more detailed, three-year study of the effects of MAO inhibitors on 60 hysteroids. Where will he find that many truly lovesick? No problem, says Klein. "They're all around us."

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