Mass Hysteria

“In my opinion of those three conditions I would think that mass hysteria would cause more of a day to day issue,” said Margaret Gallagher, anatomy teacher. According to Healthline Mass Hysteria is a conversion disorder, or mental health condition that involves physical symptoms prompted by emotional or mental tension. Mass Hysteria tends to affect multiple people and often spreads visually and verbally. There are two types of Mass Hysteria: Mass anxiety hysteria and Mass motor hysteria.

Mass anxiety hysteria spreads from person to person and involves sudden tension, restlessness, fear, and other symptoms of anxiety that usually end quickly. Mass anxiety hysteria is usually found in isolated communities and close knit groups.

Mass motor hysteria also spreads from person to person but tends to resolve slower than mass anxiety hysteria Mass motor hysteria consists of irregular motor symptoms that can show up among people experiencing frequent tension and long term stress. “I’ve heard of mass hysteria before, like the town of people that danced until they died,” said Emma Morgan, freshman. According to Medium’s website, Choreomania or dancing mania was present in Europe around the 14th and 17th centuries and consisted of groups of people dancing in the streets without rest until they would collapse of injury, exhaustion, or even death. No one really knows how choreomania started or ended but many scientists now recognize it as a case of mass motor hysteria.

Not all cases of mass hysteria are gruesome and result in death though. In fact many people have most likely experienced a tame form of mass hysteria before. For example, when a pop quiz is announced in class and students begin to suddenly feel tense, that would be considered very tame form mass anxiety hysteria. A very recent form of mass motor hysteria was the toilet paper hoarding that came with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Foreign Accent Syndrome

Foreign Accent Syndrome is a condition where a person begins to speak with an accent that they did not previously have, usually because of damage to the central nervous system. Psychogenic Foreign Accent Syndrome is a variant of Foreign Accent Syndrome. Psychogenic Foreign Accent Syndrome causes a person to speak with a foreign accent for psychological reasons, such as a neurological condition or even mental health conditions.

Foreign accent syndrome is an extremely rare condition and according to Medical News Today’s website as little as 80 people in the world have this condition as of a 2018 analysis. Foreign Accent Syndrome is not curable but can be regulated by medicine, surgery, or speech therapy depending on what caused the person to develop foreign accent syndrome.

“If I had to choose one I would choose the foreign accent one because everything else would still be functioning and it would not affect my life quality,” said Autumn Robinson, freshman.

Many people can go along with their normal life even with Foreign Accent Syndrome, but people from different centuries who have had this condition sometimes face ostracization. According to Medical News Today’s website a very early recorded case of foreign accent syndrome details a Norwegian woman during WW2 who got hit with shrapnel and the resulting brain damage caused her to develop foreign accent syndrome in the form of a German accent which caused many people to shun her. A more recent case of foreign accent syndrome, from Medical News Today’s website, is from 2011 and involves an American English speaking woman named Karen Butler who, after a dental surgery, woke up with an accent that sounded British and Irish. Initially her accent was attributed to swelling in her mouth from surgery but weeks after surgery, when swelling went down, her accent remained. It is possible for Butler to get her American accent back through extensive speech therapy, but Butler, in an interview with Health News From NPR, said she doesn’t mind her new accent.

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Situs Inversus

Situs Inversus is a rare genetic condition in which the organs in your chest and abdomen are positioned in a mirror image of normal human anatomy. A similar condition to Situs Inversus is called Heterotaxy syndrome or “situs ambiguous.” Though contrary to Situs Inversus, Heterotaxy syndrome often causes major health problems.

Even though it may seem like Situs Inversus would cause major health problems, as it affects all your internal organs, this is usually not the case. According to the Cleveland Clinic’s website, Around 1 in every 10,000 people have Situs Inversus and just Situs Inversus alone tends to not have any health problems due to their condition. In fact you could go your entire life without knowing you had Situs Inversus if you stayed away from x-rays.

According to Science Alerts’s website, in 2019 there was a case of a 66 year old man with a cough and chest pains who, after doctors started investigating, was diagnosed with Situs Inversus after doctors discovered all of his internal organs were on the wrong side of his body. His cough and chest pains were not a cause of his Situs Inversus but an upper respiratory infection.

Another well known case of Situs Inversus is the case of 99 year old Rose Marie Bentley who died in 2018 of natural causes. According to CNN’s website, Bentley’s body was donated to science and was to be used in the dissection room at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland where her chest cavity was to be opened and observed by students. When Bentley’s chest cavity was opened, students quickly noticed that Bentley was missing a large vein that’s normally on the right side of the heart. When professors came to investigate the situation they noticed that almost all of Bentley’s internal organs were backwards. Bentley was diagnosed with Situs Inversus with levocardia which caused most of her organs to be backwards and many other medical irregularities in her body. It was estimated that Bentley’s body was one in 50 million.