Mass hysteria symptoms

Small GW, Propper MW, Randolph ET, et al Mass hysteria among student performers social relationship as a symptom predictor. Am J Psychiatry 9 1200-1205, 1991... 

Symptoms secondary to nerve agent exposure may be especially difficult to differentiate from stress-associated somatic symptoms. Disaster somatization reaction (DSD), an alternative nosological term to mass hysteria, psychogenic illness, worried well, vicarious victims and contagious fear, classifies the response in patients who interpret their anxiety symptoms as due to direct exposure or infection, or who develop symptoms similar to those identified with exposure or infection (25). 

Cultural beliefs may define the interpretation of arousal experienced by a group. In several episodes of mass hysteria in Singapore factories, Malay females showed symptoms they attributed to possession by jin, or spirits (Chew et al. 1976 Phoon 1982). Treatment of these cases often required help from a bomoh, or medicine man, believed by the women to rule demons and exorcise spirits (Chew 1978). 

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