Responding to Mass Psychogenic Illness

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Abstract
In this issue of the Journal, Jones and colleagues report on an episode of mass psychogenic illness that had a devastating impact on a high school in McMinnville, Tennessee.1 They provide an elegant description of the outbreak. Such outbreaks, unfortunately, are not novel. In 1787, St. Clare ended a similar epidemic among mill workers in Lancashire, England, by declaring the episode “merely nervous, easily cured and not introduced by the cotton.”2 Since then, there have been many reports in the medical literature of similar outbreaks, most often in closely congregated groups in enclosed settings, such as schools, factories, hospitals, and . . .