Six Hundred Catholic School Girls with Mass Hysteria

Six Hundred Mexico Catholic School Girls Possibly Had Mass Hysteria

The outbreak began back in October of 2006 when two teenage girls at Girls Town school, which is near Mexico City, were suffering from muscle atrophy and nausea. These symptoms are seen in mass hysteria.

Mass hysteria is the sociopsychological phenomenon. It is describes as the manifestation of the same hysterical symptoms by more than one person. It is also referred to as collective hysteria. It may begin when a group witnesses one individual becoming hysterical during an extremely stressful or a traumatic event. A potential symptom is group nausea, which happens when a person becomes violently ill and triggers a similar reaction in other group members.

At one point it appeared that nearly fifteen percent of the students were suffering from mass hysteria. Health officials diagnosed six hundred of the four and half thousand students. As it stands now more than a hundred students still have symptoms to suggest mass hysteria.

The Roman Catholic school is ran by Headmistress Margie Cheong, a nun for South Korea. "We really don't know the cause, but the diagnosis by health authorities is of a psychological ailment," Cheong said on Friday.

Not wanting to start a panic Cheong admits to postponing alerting parents and authorities of the illnesses earlier. Footage was captured that showed parents carrying their child to the car, some of the students could not stand and needed extra support.

It was reported that government psychologists will begin interviewing the students next week to determine what happened. Cheong school is a free establishment for girls from the ages of twelve to eighteen years old from poor families.

Headmistress Margie Cheong is under question on whether her school has committed some sort of crime, but only the future interviews will be able to determine what went on in the school. Students were only aloud two weeks of vacation a year. Some of the students had complained that disciplinary measures were overly strict, such measures as being sent to sleep in the same enclosure that houses sheep.