According to the Eastern cape provincial department of health, one child died while 18 others, including the deputy principal of the Bhekizizwe School in the province were rushed to hospital after an alleged incident of “mass hysteria” on Thursday afternoon
Mass hysteria is a condition affecting a group of persons, characterized by excitement or anxiety, irrational behavior or beliefs, or inexplicable symptoms of illness. It transmits collective illusion of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear.
However, according to spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo the “hysteria” involved visual and auditory hallucinations.
“When the hysteria hit the girl, she collapsed and died in the classroom. The rest followed with feeling ill.”
The affected were admitted to the Ngcwanguba Hospital in the province.
According to a report byJohns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, schools, workplaces, and small communities are the most common settings of these events, and women are more vulnerable to them than men.
In many cases, hysteria is triggered by an environmental incident, such as contamination of the water supply that causes people to literally worry themselves sick over getting sick, even though they’re otherwise perfectly healthy.
In other cases, people who witness individuals around them falling ill unwittingly trick their own bodies into manifesting the same symptoms. And in still other cases, social or emotional pressures simply become too much for a community to handle, leading to widespread anxiety in the form of neurological problems such as blindness or numbness.
All three situations are examples of psychosomatic disorders, meaning the brain is making the body sick, but experts say they’re no less real or painful than any other illness with physiological roots.
