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Neuropsychiatry in Film
Published in Eelco F. M. Wijdicks, Neurocinema—The Sequel, 2022
The history of psychiatry from asylum to shock therapies, lobotomies, and anti-psychotic drugs is vastly interesting to filmmakers, has spawned some scholarly work, and begs the question of whether these movies have a deeper meaning.3 Cinema also investigated mass hysteria in films such as The Witch (2015) and The White Ribbon (2009), but these topics are not considered here and will be addressed in a forthcoming work.
Folie à deux (et folie à plusiers)
Published in David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball, Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes, 2020
David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball
Several forms of herd behaviour, such as the sixteenth-century dancing mania of Europe, or outbreaks of giggling, sneezing and fainting among groups of adolescent schoolgirls which are periodically reported in the press, or some of the activities of the audiences during “pop” concerts, appear to be the result of sudden epidemics of hysteria. These examples might be termed mass hysteria, or under circumstances in which a state of religious fanaticism or primitive superstitious practices are important and relevant factors, shared religious fanaticism. The mass suicide in 1978 of 913 members of the Peoples Temple cult, including Jim Jones, their leader, and 276 children, was probably an example of this last phenomenon. It has been noted that as a member of a group an individual is in danger of losing his/her self-consciousness and may therefore fail to exercise self-criticism and self-restraint (Abse, 1974). Further, when a group is particularly associated with a pathological, especially histrionic and paranoid leader, hostile impulses can be directed outwards onto others.
Interrelated Multidimensional Diagnoses
Published in Michael R. Bütz, Parental Alienation and Factitious Disorder by Proxy Beyond DSM-5: Interrelated Multidimensional Diagnoses, 2020
The standards developed for the level of scientific certainty acceptable in legal proceedings require consideration here. A simple, but telling, literature review was conducted pertinent to the matters at hand in 2008 (Bütz, Evans, & Webber-Dereszynski, 2009). The criteria for the literature search included the words “Daubert,” “Scientific Certainty,” “Factitious Disorder by Proxy,” and “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.” PsychNet, the main search engine available for psychological publications at the time, returned no results. The majority of professional references found by other means expressed the same sentiment, that, as an individual and/or dynamic diagnosis, MSBP and/or FDBP were difficult to define at best. At worst, as Lucire (2000) stated, “Experienced practitioners agree that this phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions and has all the characteristics of mass hysteria, now termed moral panic” (p. 45).
The nocebo phenomenon in the COVID-19 pandemic: a nocebodemic effect
Published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 2022
Martina Amanzio, Giuseppina Elena Cipriani, Dimos D. Mitsikostas
The contextual factors that predispose people to nocebodemic effect are defined as ‘infodemic.’ According to the World Health Organization [17], the term infodemic includes «false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak». This leads to confusion among people and risk-taking behavior that can be detrimental to health. It also leads to distrust of health authorities and undermines public health interventions, reinforcing the nocebodemic effect. Negative contextual factors that led to people’s psychological distress included negative and contradictory information, often supported by misinformation or conspiracy theories (e.g. about a new virus, the treatment and prognosis of COVID-19, and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines) spread through social networks and the media [5,7,18]. The nocebodemic effect associated with infodemic creates a psychological distress that was previously unknown and can be presented as a cause of ‘mass hysteria.’ Indeed, contradictory and overly disseminated information in social media can lead to psychological stress that manifests itself in widespread anxiety and fear [5].
A peculiar condition: A history of the Jumping Frenchmen Syndrome in scientific and popular accounts
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2018
In 1965, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a letter to the editor by Dr. Reuben Rabinovitch, an assistant professor of neurology at McGill University, who recounted a game children used to play half a century earlier in a Québec community north of Montreal in the Laurentian mountains, where he grew up. The community had been frequented by lumberjacks who followed logs downriver to the pulp and paper mills. In the game, a child would follow another secretly, jab her or him in the ribs, and make the sound of a kicking horse; the victim would repeat the sound, jump, and throw his or her arms into the air. “Many years later I discovered that our game had been formalized in a paper, described by Beard in 1878,” Rabinovitch wrote (1965, p. 130). After reviewing the articles by Beard and Stevens about the startle disease, Rabinovitch concluded: “If one must make a disease of this, then I would suggest mass hysteria or conditioned reflex on a startled reflex basis” (1965, p. 130).
Aerotoxic syndrome, discussion of possible diagnostic criteria
Published in Clinical Toxicology, 2020
Gerard Hageman, Teake M. Pal, Jik Nihom, Sarah J. Mackenzie Ross, Martin van den Berg
The symptoms reported by aircrew are relatively non-specific, making it important that other causes of ill health are excluded by medical history, physical and neurological examination, laboratory investigation, brain MRI and psychological assessment. Neuropsychological assessment not only detects cognitive impairment, but also can exclude a depressive disorder, somatisation disorder and malingering [9]. Psychological factors such as mass hysteria, stress-induced hyperventilation, nocebo effects or psychosomatic conditions; or other aspects of working in the aviation industry such as shift work, jet lag, pressure changes, exposure to cosmic radiation and ozone may be responsible for the onset of ill health.