Fifty years ago, Ms. Shapiro's experience would have been called a "nervous breakdown" an unscientific term for personal crises ranging from serious mental illness and alcoholism to marital problems and stress.
The FBI then leaked this misinformation to the press, which soon began writing stories questioning Liuzzo's mental health (she had once suffered a nervousbreakdown) and her morality.
There's no official term for milder forms of "nervous breakdown, " though some patients and clinicians wish there was still a name for a temporary state of being overwhelmed by outside forces without an underlying mental illness.