
When you talk about a country you never visited, consider Paris syndrome - theseadroid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
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ineedasername
I call BS. When you're talking about a little more than a dozen diagnoses a
year out of millions of tourists, a charitable interpretation comporting to
this so-called syndrome is simply the statistical extreme of culture shock.
But much more likely would be individuals with pre-existing, perhaps even
undiagnosed sensitivity to various forms of mental illness thay happen to be
triggered during their trip.

Perhaps in some it's even triggered because of the trip, as disruptions from
normal routines and environs can be such a trigger, but a dozen or two out of
millions doesn't rise above the (much higher) baseline of mental healh issues
present in the population.

(Given about 33 million tourists per year and the approximate rate of 1:1600
baseline of psychosis in the population, more than 20,000 tourists might be
expected to suffer from such a condition. That a handful have an episode on
vacation is not evidence of some special syndrome)

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fenomas
I don't have any studies to link but at some point I read up on this and
reached the same conclusion. The "discoverer" wrote a popular book about it
that apparently caught the public imagination, but IIRC it was based on a
small handful of cases, and if you try to find stats the number of people
involved doesn't seem to differ much from what you'd expect for tourists
having miscellaneous sorts of nervous episodes (or whatever the term would
be).

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theseadroid
The reason I posted this is to remind us what we have read from media could be
far from the truth.

[https://www.sbs.com.au/news/paris-syndrome-culture-shock-
sic...](https://www.sbs.com.au/news/paris-syndrome-culture-shock-sickness-
sends-japanese-tourists-packing)

~~~
ineedasername
This approximate article in this approximate form is recycled every few years
with no real evidence to back it up as an independant mental illness. I don't
dispute that pop culture misrepresent any number of real life places and
experiences. But roughly 1 in 1600 people will experience a psychotic episode
in any given year. That a small handful get diagnosed, perhaps for the first
time, during vacation isn't any cause for alarm or special diagnosis. It's
even less surprising that the prevalence of this comes from countries where
mental health issues are under diagnosed and overly stigmatized-- when the
person coincidentally has an episode during vacation in a place with more
progressive views of mental health they finally get recognized.

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pizza
one of these days they will make boredom a disease, too

