What Is Mass Hysteria?

Posted on 12 May 2015 at 21:03

Also known as group hysteria, collective hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior, mass hysteria is a condition that is familiar in the psychology, sociology, and medicine fields. In psychology and sociology, mass hysteria refers to a situation when a society suffers a collective delusion brought about by fear or rumor. This spreads so rapidly that it is almost like an epidemic.

In medicine, mass hysteria describes the scenario when two or more people manifest spontaneously similar or the same physical symptoms that are considered hysteria. According to science, mass hysteria normally starts when a person becomes hysterical or ill when he or she experiences stress. After this person displays the symptoms, other people nearby begin to show the same symptoms, usually muscle weakness, nausea, headache, and fits.

While medical professionals call the above conditions as mass hysteria, people outside of the medical and psychology fields don't call it that way. Instead, they call it possession. One case in point was in Malaysia from 1970s to 1980s, when young women and school-age girls are supposed to have been possessed by "spirits."

Do you believe in the occult? Or do you just subscribe to the explanation given by science?

* Warning: This blog is my original work. Please don't plagiarize.