This is a .... surprising.... line of argument to read. I am unsure of the precise context (when/where) this argument is supposed to be valid, so naturally I will speak only of the British experience.

Some main core points, Calvinism (and hues of movements which follow it) does not correlate geographically, socio-economically, nor demographically with the prevalence and patterns of neurasthenia diagnosis. To further conflate the ethos of Calvinist belief with the desire to secure employment opportunities is at best reductive. Calvinism (insofar) as practised in the 19th century was far more individual and broadly concerned than mere occupation. Third, women's labour does shift in the period to reflect some changes wrought by industrialisation but in reality a) much discourse shows how industrialisation held surprising amounts of continuity in patterns of work and b) women's labour seems to become more rather than less demanding.

In addition, there are some serious challenges to the conception of neurasthenia as I read it here. Now, a quick note. Psychiatric labels and illness are very nebulous and difficult to handle here. Beyond a very different epistemologies and understanding at the time, much of it is warped by the rising need of the new medical professionals of the mind to systematise, legitimise, and monopolise this area into a discipline. In addition, the market forces working on the 'professionals' in the field have additional polluting effects. Finally, the discretion of professional and individuals means much of the experience of mental illness in the period remains obscure from historians. We are working with very fluid ideas here and thus are talking in the broadest of brush strokes. This is not a world of fixed meanings and empirical understandings. Certainly not one of universal experience.

That said, neurasthenia's thing was that it transcended mere anxiety (cognition/mood) disorders. These were captured by hysteria and hypochondria (as well as many others - don't look too hard for consistency or even logic in the categorisation at a point in this area). It sought to bridge physiological and cognition issues by rooting the condition in a theory of nervous exhaustion fashionable and relatable at the time given the pace and demands of modern life and contemporary understandings of human biology. Essentially it placed the condition beyond simple 'madness' (with its associated social destruction), for it had a physical cause and cure which had an amelioration in physical responses (spas, bed rest, relaxants, the Weir Mitchell Cure etc.) and office-based practice (thus saving one from the asylum and ensuring repeat business for the professional).

It is for this reason that it was also far more socially acceptable condition, making it in many ways far more public than other forms of 'madness' at the time. Indeed, it was frequently commented to be an elite malady, and held a curiously positive position in perception as a result of its physical (and thus unavoidable/unlinked to character) nature, often virtuous cause, and typical sufferers. While this has at times been overplayed, it nonetheless is a disproportionately male, wealthy condition epistemologically (at least a disproportionately declared one). This is another place the summary outlined seems to fall down, it is a weird condition for the time in that (while it fluctuates) is one of the more equally-represented conditions between genders - making it certainly not the choice of condition to ascribe to women only. Certainly, it is a weird one to put epidemiologically among the employment-dispossessed (working class) women of industrialising England.

The result was that neurasthenia became a 'common weasel' in the words of Shorter, and at best an umbrella term for a huge variety of conditions/symptoms running into dozens. It also precipitously disappeared in the early 20th century, only reinforcing the historical suspicion whether the condition existed at all and question its actual nature. While the reason for its remarkable evaporation and thus inherent nature differ and remains contested (for example on one side it is seen as to be a inexact grab-bag of real conditions tied unhelpfully together into an unjustifiable medical term, on the other it represents the interrelationship between mental health concepts as social constructions, market forces, 19th century scientific culture and the malleability of the human mind) it is certainly not a fixed and agreed-upon condition. This is the final point I wish to make, that whichever way one turns, and reasonable minds can disagree, the clumsy supposition that it was a definite and concrete condition that this line of argument seemingly suggests really flies in the face of much of the discussion of the condition.

In sum, aside from the argument’s rather weak foundations supposing the nature of society/Calvinism as it changed in the industrialising era it also fundamentally seems to ignore much of the discussion around gender, mental illness, and specifically neurasthenia. I cannot comment more having not read the book, and thus I am working off what you have presented here….. however I must admit to not putting the work in my every growing ‘in’ pile to read….

There is a lot one could talk about neurasthenia, it is a fascinating condition to study historically. But this conception outlined here, this is not the one.

Sources

Scull - The Most Solitary of Afflictions

Shorter - A History of Psychiatry

Clark - The Struggle for Breeches

Harris - Private lives, public spirit: Britain 1870-1914