Prairie madness

Prairie madness, also called prairie fever, was an affliction reported among European settlers in the Great Plains during their migration to and settlement of the Canadian Prairies and the western United States in the 19th century. Settlers from urbanized or settled parts of the East faced the risk of mental breakdown from harsh living conditions and extreme isolation on the prairie. Reported symptoms included depression, withdrawal, changes in character and habit, and violence, and some sufferers moved back East or, in extreme cases, took their own lives. It is not a clinical condition but a theme in fiction and non-fiction of the period describing a fairly common phenomenon, and Eugene Virgil Smalley wrote of it in 1893.