Mass psychogenic illness

Mass psychogenic illness
Other names	Mass hysteria, epidemic hysteria, mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder
Painting of 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
Duration	For most cases, under 12 hours to days
Risk factors	Childhood or adolescence, female gender,[1] intense media coverage, or widespread publicity
Differential diagnosis	Actual diseases (e.g., infectious diseases, environmental toxins or exposures), somatic symptom disorder
Treatment	Usually isolation or separation from perceived threat
Prognosis	Most eventually recover

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.^[2][3] 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.^[4][5]