Mass psychogenic illness: Role of the individual physician

Mass psychogenic illness is characterized by symptoms, occurring among a gr oup of persons with shared beliefs regarding those symptoms, that suggest o rganic illness but have no identifiable environmental cause and little clin ical or laboratory evidence of disease. Mass psychogenic illness typically affects adolescents or children, groups under stress and females disproport ionately more than males. Symptoms often follow an environmental trigger or illness in an index case. They can spread rapidly by apparent visual trans mission, may be aggravated by a prominent emergency or media response, and frequently resolve after patients are separated from each other and removed from the environment in which the outbreak began. Physicians should consid er this diagnosis when faced with a cluster of unexplained acute illness.