STAFF at a specialist science college feared a gas leak in
December when over 30 pupils and a teaching assistant were suddenly taken ill.
It began when three children complained of feeling queasy during a class
screening of a biology video. As more and more children started reporting
similar symptoms, the emergency services were called and the South Yorkshire
school was evacuated. However, no gas leak or other environmental cause was
found, and of the 32 pupils taken to hospital, all were discharged after four
hours. It seems the incident is the latest example of what’s known as mass
hysteria.
Dr Markus Reuber, a consultant neurologist at the Royal
Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, told us he could think of several historical
precedents for mass illnesses being related to ‘psychological factors’,
including the unexplained illness that affected several young girls in Salem in
1692; and the British phenomenon of ‘railway spine’ in the 19th century
(passengers reported feeling faint and suffering back pain - a psychological
reaction that experts at the time said was due to the effect of 30 mph speeds
on the human body).
However, Reuber cautioned that ‘mass illnesses’ and are not
only caused by conscious or self-serving factors. ‘Sometimes large groups of
people are exposed to distressing circumstances which would be considered
sufficient to cause conditions like PTSD,’ he said, citing the example of
shell-shock in the First World War.
One defining feature of mass hysteria is its
ability to spread like a kind of psychological epidemic. According to Emeritus
Professor of Sociology Erich Goode at the State University of New York,
gullibility and suggestibility are often considered to be at the root of these
‘hysterical contagions’. He told The Psychologist that ‘mass psychogenic
illness is a subset of a larger collective behaviour phenomenon: the collective
delusion, in which large numbers of people believe something - often, the
presence of a threat - to be true that is nonexistent… episodes often involve
wildfire suggestibility and a rapid cycle, ending in the belief's dissipation’.
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Christian Jarrett, staff journalist
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