What you are describing sounds like most likely a panic attack. Nervous breakdown was never a clinical term and it isn't specific to any particular event or disorder. It is a layman's term referring to the onset of significant mental health symptoms or reaching a breaking point. It used to be thought that these events were more permanent than we consider them to be now, and people would be "put away" or labeled as "delicate" and severely limited possibly for the rest of their lives. I like to think that we have a more hopeful outlook now and are better at treating mental illness and allowing people to go on living their lives.