
The Mystery of 18 Twitching Teenagers in Le Roy - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-twitching-le-roy.html?_r=1&hp
======
pessimizer
Quick book recommendation if you want to read descriptions of dozens of
incidents from around the world of groups of girls around the same age that go
to the same school or belong to the same convent going through the exact same
thing while their parents and community leaders demand answers from the
government and blame pollution, demons, or witchcraft.

 _OUTBREAK! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior_ by Hilary Evans
and Robert Bartholomew.

This type of thing seems to potentially happen in any group, but these group
Tourette's-like symptoms are particularly frequent in institutionalized young
girls under stress. If this case is typical, we'll eventually find out that
the girl who started twitching first was a fairly popular or influential girl
within the group and has a troubled personal history, or even actually was
having some sort of seizure condition that nobody was aware of. You'll be able
to connect her to every other girl because they either saw her or heard about
her before showing symptoms themselves.

<http://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=37>

The authors' stated goal in compiling the book was as a reference for studying
whatever it is about people that makes this happen. Pretty great bedtime
reading.

~~~
emmelaich
The classic text is (from 1841 !)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds)

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Maciek416
At first I was a little irritated at the article's style and how it holds back
the truth for a few pages, but the truth of this story turns out to be
absolutely fascinating stuff. A quote:

"Cheerleaders frequently come up in case histories of mass psychogenic illness
at schools, partly because psychogenic outbreaks often start with someone of
high social status. But it might also be that their enviable unity is what
makes them more susceptible. In 2002, 10 students, 5 of them cheerleaders, in
a rural town in North Carolina suffered from nonepileptic seizures and
fainting spells. In 1952, the Associated Press reported that 165 members of
the Tigerettes cheerleading squad from Monroe, La., fainted before halftime at
a high-school football game in nearby Natchez, Miss."

I would love to hear someone try to speculate on an evolutionary reason for
this kind of behaviour. What kind of advantage might this sort of thing have
given humans in the past?

~~~
maratd
> What kind of advantage might this sort of thing have given humans in the
> past?

You're skipping a very important detail in all of this.

The gender.

A sick man deserves contempt, a sick woman deserves attention and caring.
Which explains why most men insist they're fine, even when at the brink of
death, while women are incapacitated with the slightest headache.

In my experience, women have a tendency of succumbing to periodic ill-feeling.
All of it subconscious. This brings the attention of men and family. That
constant and consistent caring is habit forming and serves her well in the
future when she becomes genuinely sick (or pregnant). There's your
evolutionary justification.

This seems like an extreme example of the above. Probably a high status female
overdid it and the rest of the females were just mimicking her behavior, all
of it subconsciously. While human beings are drawn to certain behaviors
instinctively, the nuts and bolts of the behavior is learned and passed down
culturally. In other words, women may have a predilection toward periodic ill-
feeling, but in what manner they express it is up to them ... or in this case,
up to the high-status female.

~~~
andrewfelix
Not sure what anecdotal evidence you're leaning on to prop up that argument.
My mother used to work herself to the bone even with a cold.

~~~
ekianjo
Every rule can have exceptions. I do not know if there is any data to back
this up, though. Unless you consider that it seems women seem to visit doctors
or medical institutions more much often than men (at least in the countries I
know of). That could be an indication of this underlying behavior.

~~~
TruthElixirX
Or it could be that women are more often targets of violence and are more
prone to medical issues due to reproduction.

------
frisco
It seems to me like medicine has had trouble saying "I don't know" since the
beginning. Throughout the ages we've had "default" diagnoses to fall back on
when we couldn't figure out anything else better. And we don't seem to learn.
Medicine should be conducted solely on the basis of evidence: in lieu of a
clinically proven, statistically sound diagnostic test, the default should be,
"I'm sorry, but I don't know" and a referral to a higher specialist.

I suppose we always want to feel like we can do something (and who knows,
maybe the psychological counseling here _will_ help), but ultimately it's not
falsifiable. Maybe they'd have spontaneously resolved anyway? Or maybe it's
truly a new disease. What is absolutely true, though, is that the human body,
and especially the brain, are mindblowingly complex and can do crazy things.
We _barely_ understand even the most well known neurological disorders. But
this speculation-based post hoc rationalizing is just bad medicine.

As an aside, I wonder if health insurance has limited the diagnostic work up
on these girls or if the publicity ensured they were taken care of there. A
full neuro imaging suite and chemical workup is easily over $100k in the US.

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dazbradbury
Definition of _Conversion Disorder_ , which the girls are "diagnosed" with:

    
    
      Conversion disorder is a condition in which a person has
      blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system (neurologic) 
      symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation.[1]
    

Along with _Mass Psychogenic Illness_ :

    
    
      The rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting 
      members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous 
      system disturbance involving excitation, loss or 
      alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that 
      are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic 
      aetiology.[2]
    

[1] - <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001950/>

[2] - <http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/180/4/300.full>

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noonespecial
There's a long history of weirdness surrounding this sort of illness. This one
is my favorite:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania>

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aspensmonster
And this is the link for the entire story on a single page without the
annoying navbars and advertisements.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-
twi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-twitching-le-
roy.html?_pagewanted=print)

EDIT: So you can't jump straight to the meaningful content. Cute.

~~~
sanukcm
There is a single page link under print...

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-
twi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-twitching-le-
roy.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all)

------
adaml_623
I wonder how long it will be be before this type of Mass Hysteria situation
can occur with geographically diverse groups who are linked via online social
networking. Obviously once people start hanging out in shared video
conferencing situations you have the possibility of people copying one
another's visual cues and perhaps that leads to this disorder. Has anybody
heard about this happening over facebook yet?

~~~
khafra
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons>

------
eps
A spoiler would be hugely appreciated.

~~~
jholman
THPOILER ALERT!

By the end of the article, we still don't know what's affecting the girls, but
the author is strongly hinting in the direction of a mass pychogenic illness,
a.k.a. mass hysteria, which has been a front-runner diagnosis from the
beginning (although generally rejected by the victims and their parents).

There's no evidence of environmental contamination. One doctor has come up
with a fringe diagnosis, and is treating for it, with some success, but
international experts on his diagnosis say it's basically impossible. Oh, and
there's a pattern of weak family ties in the homes of the afflicted girls. It
ends with some talk of the successes of a doctor who is pursuing psychological
therapy as the main treatment (along with exhaustive testing for other causes,
just in case).

~~~
cperciva
_One doctor has come up with a fringe diagnosis, and is treating for it, with
some success, but international experts on his diagnosis say it's basically
impossible._

As he comments, it's hard to distinguish between his treatment and the placebo
effect. Given that his treatment is mostly harmless (unless you're a
bacterium), does it really matter?

~~~
pessimizer
At a similar event at Qawa Primary School on the Fijian island of Vanau Levu,
the girls were cured by:

"[...]a Hindu priest ( _pandit_ ) who asked the Hindu elephant god for help in
appeasing the disturbed spirits of [an accidentally partially bulldozed sacred
pool near the school playground] during a public Om Shanti ceremony."

from: _OUTBREAK! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior_ by Hilary
Evans and Robert Bartholomew.

<http://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=37>

I think the key is to be very solemn and convincing, and to either honestly
believe you're effecting a cure, or never let on that you're bullshitting.

------
arctangent
This sort of thing has been going on for a very long time. See this, for
example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania>

------
mkramlich
I'm betting it's fraud, started first by one teen girl to get attention, then
"spread" to others as it became clear it would be a cool joke to play on
adults, and get attention, get famous, etc. Is it possible it's truly some
kind of involuntary medical/mental phenomenon? Of course. I'm just saying that
I doubt it.

~~~
YmMot
This is a very destructive and incorrect attitude.

Psychogenic illness is __not __"faking it"...it is very real. It simply means
the cause of the problems are based somewhere in the "software" rather than
the "hardware". The brain is an exceptionally complicated thing, and the
interactions between parts of it can result in all sorts of feedback loops,
errors, etc.

If you really don't think it's perfectly possible and probable for a group of
teenage girls to develop a shared psychogenic illness completely spontaneously
without any sort of guile or even conscious awareness on their part, then
unfortunately you have a very simplified and inaccurate understanding of just
how complicated and fuzzy our brains are.

Most people have a very poor conception of just how fuzzy the line between
what lay people call "sane" and "crazy", and just how easy it is for your
brain to trick you. Consider this: a sizable portion of your memories are
false. I don't care who you are, this is simply a fact of being human. Some of
your memories are constructions based on friends/family describing the event
to you some of them are just complete fabrications. However, if asked you
would swear up and down they are real. It's not hard to create false memories
in people...show them commercials of a non-existent product and many will
remember having used it at some point. They're not liars....they're not
fakers...they're not idiots...it's just that the human brain is not as simple
as we like to think.

This attitude is extremely harmful because it creates an environment where
nobody wants to be told they have a "psychogenic illness"....and we get people
claiming that hamburgers/magnetic waves/whatever are causing their strange
symptoms...and since that's not the case they won't get effective treatment.
Furthermore, these people are now potentially harassed by the ignorant;
accused of "faking" it for attention...so we have a whole class of illness
that isn't being treated due to this ignorant idea.

You've actually got it backwards. It's "possible" that they are faking it, but
this sort of involuntary tic is not easy to fake under medical examination.
The most likely scenario is that to whatever extent the girls are "doing it
themselves", they are unaware of it. I'm sure the attention they get is a part
of the feedback loop causing the behavior, but it's important to realize that
that does not mean this is some cynical plot to get attention. That's possible
of course, but there's no reason to believe it's the most likely possibility
and many to believe it's not.

~~~
mkramlich
You should reread this sentence from my comment:

> Is it possible it's truly some kind of involuntary medical/mental
> phenomenon? Of course. I'm just saying that I doubt it.

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mrtimo
i still don't understand

