Mass Hysteria and the Media: Folie à Troupeau?

Abstract

After a dozen girls from Le Roy, New York, developed ticlike movements at the start of the 2011 school year, local physicians quickly suggested a diagnosis of mass hysteria. Dissatisfied with this explanation, some of the students went on television to question the diagnosis, setting off a news media frenzy that persisted for weeks.1 Despite the characteristic clustering of affected individuals and the appearance of the movements (one student famously halted her tics long enough to apply eyeliner, then promptly resumed her movements after completing this important task), there was rampant skepticism about the diagnosis, particularly by people with little direct involvement. According to contemporary reports, California environmental activist Erin Brockovich and others suggested that the outbreak was caused by groundwater contamination with trichloroethane resulting from a train derailment four decades earlier and 4 miles away.1 Neither this nor other chemical contaminants were identified in the groundwater near the school. Others promoted an equally unsubstantiated connection to Gardasil vaccination or to pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections. Reports months later that the students had recovered and that a systematic analysis confirmed the original diagnosis of mass hysteria received little media coverage. A few years before the Le Roy story emerged, I described ten teenage girls from a rural school with paroxysmal episodes resembling epilepsy or syncope.2 With few exceptions, each girl had no more than one episode in a given day. The school personnel documented that the attacks typically occurred between classes or during break times, but almost never in the classroom. Over half of the students were treated with one or more