What is "hospitalism"

Hospitalism \Hos"pi*tal*ism\, n. (Med.) A vitiated condition of the body, due to long confinement in a hospital, or the morbid condition of the atmosphere of a hospital.

n. 1 (context psychology English) waste away of infants in long-term institutional care, caused by lack of contact with caregivers 2 (context medicine dated English) A vitiated condition of the body, due to long confinement in a hospital, or the morbid condition of the atmosphere of a hospital.

Hospitalism (or anaclitic depression in its sublethal form) was a pediatric diagnosis used in the 1930s to describe infants who wasted away while in hospital. The symptoms could include retarded physical development, and disruption of perceptual-motor skills and language. It is now understood that this wasting disease was mostly caused by a lack of social contact between the infant and its caregivers. Infants in poorer hospitals were less subject to this disease since those hospitals could not afford incubators which meant that the hospital staff regularly held the infants.

The term was used by the psychotherapist René Spitz in 1945, but its origins are older than this; it occurs in an editorial in Archives on Pediatrics as early as 1897.

It appears under adjustment disorders at , in the World Health Organization's classification of diseases, ICD-10.