more kids now affected, including a boy

[EAMom]

http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s2463450.shtml

 

Ooops! I meant to type "Le Roy" not "Le Rosy"

Edited January 24, 2012 by EAMom

[thenmama]

I wonder if the involvement of a boy will change anything re: the "mass hysteria" nonsense. One of things I've found so distressing about this situation-- beyond how terrible it is for these poor kids and their families--is how gendered it's been. If this was a group of twelve boys-- say the football or basketball teams-- there's no way they'd have given a Mass Hysteria/Psych dx.

 

Conversion disorder is, after all, the new name for hysteria (and even Freud acknowledged symptoms of organic illness in hysterical patients and it's widely accepted that the "hysterics" of that era-- incl Freud's were all or nearly all suffering from misdx'd organic illnesses)... Historically, women have been frequently misdx'd with psychosomatic illness later discovered to have organic causes-- and still are

 

This is a nice quote from Eliot Slater that seems apt for the situation in Le Roy

 

The diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ is all too often a way of avoiding a confrontation with our own ignorance. This is especially dangerous when there is an underlying organic pathology, not yet recognised. In this penumbra we find patients who know themselves to be ill but, coming up against the blank faces of doctors who refuse to believe in the reality of their illness, proceed by way of emotional lability, overstatement and demands for attention ... Here is an area where catastrophic errors can be made. In fact it is often possible to recognise the presence though not the nature of the unrecognisable, to know that a man must be ill or in pain when all the tests are negative. But it is only possible to those who come to their task in a spirit of humility.

[norcalmom]

Mass hysteria isn't only for girls silly! - if you google the top ten incidences of mass hysteria - the number two is "Penis Panic"!

 

"A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic in which male members of a population suddenly experience the belief that their genitals are getting smaller or disappearing entirely. Penis panics have occurred around the world, most notably in Africa and Asia. Local beliefs in many instances assert that such physical changes are often fatal. In cases where the fear of the penis being retracted is secondary to other conditions, psychological diagnosis and treatments are under development. It is becoming increasingly clear that these forms of mass hysteria are more common than previously thought. Injuries have occurred when stricken men have resorted to apparatus such as needles, hooks, fishing line, and shoe strings, to prevent the disappearance of their penises. An epidemic struck Singapore in 1967, resulting in thousands of reported cases. Government and medical officials alleviated the outbreak only by a massive campaign to reassure men of the anatomical impossibility of retraction together with a media blackout on the spread of the condition."

 

 

http://listverse.com/2009/03/16/top-10-bizarre-cases-of-mass-hysteria/