Mass psychogenic illness
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for contagion. It is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic causes that are known.
| Mass psychogenic illness | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Mass hysteria, epidemic hysteria, mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder |
| Dancing plagues of the Middle Ages are thought to have been caused by mass hysteria. | |
| Specialty | Psychiatry, clinical psychology |
| Symptoms | Headache, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, cough, fatigue, sore throat |
| Risk factors | Childhood or adolescence, female gender, intense media coverage |
| Differential diagnosis | Actual diseases, mass delusions, somatic symptom disorder |
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