A doctor’s theory that the Pasir Gudang pollution was a case of mass hysteria caused a quite a stir recently.
Those who took umbrage bantered and argued on social media. Understandably, parents were mortified, especially those whose children had breathing difficulties and nausea. But the good doctor’s postulation is not without basis.
Research by Johns Hopkins University said mass hysteria is “a constellation of symptoms suggestive of organic illness, but without an identifiable cause”. It is usually triggered by an environmental incident — such as contamination of water supply that causes people to “literally worry themselves sick over getting sick, even though they’re otherwise perfectly healthy”.
A psychologist says it is a condition that begins in the mind, and the physiological symptoms are “not imagined, but real”.
He also says with millennials’ fondness of using inappropriate terms to describe certain situations, mass hysteria has become a phrase to refer to anything from screaming crowds at concerts to masses participating in riots.
It may be so that the Pasir Gudang pollution is such a phenomenon.
Datuk Dr Looi Hoong Wah, a fellow of the Academy of Medicine Malaysia, explained that it is a common condition and diagnosed frequently in many countries without causing distress or shame.
It is not, he stressed, a form of madness, just a temporary disturbance of a person’s conscious and psychological state.
Indeed, doctors the world over have found the phenomenon perplexing. Many incidents have been documented over the ages, some bizarre.
In England in 1965, a group of girls from a school in Blackburn complained of dizziness; two hours later, they fainted. A medical analysis said the “incident” was hysterical; a previous polio epidemic had rendered the population emotionally vulnerable, and a three-hour parade, which saw 20 fainting cases on the day before the outbreak, triggered it.
Last September, 106 passengers of Emirates’ Flight 203 from Dubai to New York (14 hours) displayed fever, coughing, sneezing and vomiting symptoms.
The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was notified. Upon arrival in New York, the aircraft and passengers were quarantined.
A medical assessment saw 11 passengers (who had the flu) being sent to the hospital. It was later discovered the symptoms (sneezing, fever, and vomiting) had led the other passengers to believe that they too were sick after observing those around them.
Closer to home in Kota Baru, Kelantan, three years ago, some 100 students were affected during a mass hysteria outbreak in four schools.
No one could pinpoint the actual cause, but there were talks of supernatural entities “disturbing” the students.
There may be more to the Pasir Gudang pollution which may warrant further investigation, such as why did the pollution only affect some schoolchildren and teachers, but not the whole school, as in the earlier Sungai Kim Kim incident?
If it is mass hysteria, what triggered it and why? An officer with Darul Syifa, an Islamic healing centre that deals in the paranormal, says mass hysteria does not discriminate as it can happen to anyone, but people who are empathetic are the most vulnerable. And in most cases, the symptoms, although only in the mind, are real.
This Leader is not dismissing or doubting the medical findings or environmental reports by the authorities in the Pasir Gudang and Sungai Kim Kim incidents, but for major cases that involve the public any investigation must leave no stone unturned.