The Aachen dancing mania of 1374, the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962, and the Pokémon Shock of 1997 are now all classified as the same clinical phenomenon. What's the modern medical name?
*Mass psychogenic illness* is the term preferred in current WHO and American Psychiatric Association literature. The older terms — *mass hysteria*, *collective madness*, *epidemic conversion disorder* — are now considered partially or wholly stigmatising. The clinical pattern is consistent across the seven-century case series: an outbreak of physical symptoms (dancing, twitching, fainting, laughing, etc.) that spreads through a connected social group under sustained collective anxiety or stress, cannot be explained by organic pathology, and self-limits when the affected individuals are separated from each other or from the triggering environment.
Read the full story →Mass psychogenic illness — the modern medical term for what older eras called collective madness — has been documented continuously across Europe and the rest of the world for at least seven hundred years. The clinical pattern is the same. The cultural framing changes.
Related questions
- In what year did the Aachen dancing mania — the larger, less famous predecessor of the 1518 Strasbourg outbreak — strike?
- Who began the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague?
- The 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague is famous. It had a much larger predecessor 144 years earlier that started after a major Rhine flood and moved up the river. The year?
- After the Strasbourg city council's first chosen treatment for the 1518 dancing plague (hire musicians, build stages, encourage the dancing) had visibly failed, they tried a second approach. What was it?