Are you saying that you think all these girls, at 50-60 schools across the entire country, who are displaying these symptoms, all at the same time, are suffering from... hysteria?

O...kay.

Yes, things like this do actually happen. Across the country doesn't matter with worldwide news.

That's one option mentioned in the article itself.

"Are you saying that there's some widespread campaign to poison girls, with incidenbts in 50-60 schools so far?" Doesn't sound much saner.

If this is a psychological effect, then what a truly interesting defense mechanism. Because it is getting the parents pretty worked up.

I mean, it's happened before

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morangos_com_A%C3%A7%C3%BAcar_...

Possibly multiple times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_student_poisoning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness#In_sc...

If it can happen to adults CIA employees why not Iranian girls?

Psychosomatic illnesses spread very easily, through the same means other memetic changes spread.

Unfortunately many people mistakenly believe a psychosomatic illness isn't "real" - when professionals tell them "These people have a psychosomatic illness" what they hear is "These people are lying" which is not what was said, and so when the same professionals tell them, "You have a psychosomatic illness" they hear "You are lying" and they're angry - how dare these professionals accuse them of lying! They know it's real!

That honestly sounds way more plausible than Islamist hardliners poisoning 50-60 girls' schools without leaving any trace. Poisonings usually leave some biological marker and if it is people from the same group poisoning the schools it is odd that no one has been caught.

There is no such thing as "mass hysteria".

That "mystery illness" is an invention to explain away cases of unknown cause. An argument by ignorance essentially.

Observe how in this particular instance the spread of the disease does not conform to what would be expected if the cause was information.

The fact that 50-60 schools across the country have been affected by reports of poisoning makes it highly unlikely that there was a coordinated poisoning campaign. Such a campaign would require a significant amount of planning, resources, and coordination, and it is unlikely that a single group or individual could carry out such a campaign across multiple schools in different regions of the country. MPI is a very plausible explanation and fits the facts of this case much better than an unprecedented mass poisoning.

Except the state. The state can plan and carry this out.

There has been plenty of examples of mass illness not connected to anything tangible, like a detectable disease or infections. The famous study on “long Covid” gave multiple examples of large groups of people experiencing symptoms with vague connections to any physical condition like headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness, generic “pain”, etc. They cited multiple other incidents such as the “gulf war syndrome” and a few others I can’t remember off hand.

These are very similar to mass hysteria. But they are connected to very real things like subsets of the population experiencing trauma. War and covid was traumatic mentally for a lot of people and that can manifest as other physical symptoms. Whether everyone in the group has a direct connection to those things or get grouped through circumstance and general interest by doctors/scientists/media is a big differentiator.

(Not saying this poisoning case fits this but it’s always good to be suspicious).

People being unable to find a cause for something does not make that event a diagnosable illness.

Essentially, you are confabulating a cause where there is not enough evidence.

Yep just like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, both affects …certain types of personalies but also people with long histories of poor physical and mental health (which is trendy to get over-excused these days as being without any personal responsibility but there's still plenty of people with serious personal backgrounds where it's difficult to pass judgement). But ultimately the appearance of symptoms doesn’t make it an illness. Still a “syndrome” is better than “mass panic”.

This is outright propaganda.

There’s gas based chemical attacks happening and we have mx brains over here saying it’s mass hysteria.

> gas based chemical attacks happening

What is the evidence?

I’m seriously asking, because this whole things looks likely to be ignored if evidence is being suppressed.

There are a few telegram channels that report what's going on the street. They're effectively Iran's eye-witness news:

- https://t.me/VahidOnline (Even won an award) - https://t.me/mamlekate

Hundreds of people have reported that they have smelt vanilla-like smell, which is a classic smell in various chemical attack agents.

It's outright absurd to call this an event of mass hysteria, and I'm not really sure how anyone is even getting the evidence to call it that.

The person being quoted in that article literally worked for the Iranian government. They're not a trust worthy source, where it's looking more and more like this is happening with the blessing of the state (the scale, and lack of action by officials)

> are a few telegram channels that report what's going on the street

Someone needs to work to compile this into a credible report. (Rando Telegrams aren’t that.) Gas attacks raise questions, such as how adults in the vicinity weren’t impacted.

The linked article says mass hysteria is a possible cause, why is discussing it "outright propaganda?"

> Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent former reformist lawmaker at Tehran’s Ettelaat newspaper.

This person is not a trustworthy source of information. They've worked for the Iranian government.

They're also the source for it being a terrorist attack. Is discussing that outright propaganda?

As long as no direct cause is found, mass hysteria is a possibility. And while it's certainly possible there's a massive government cover-up, it's also possible there's nothing to cover-up.

Again, "mass hysteria" is no real phenomenon. Rather, it is a pseudo-scientific "explanation", bereft of logic and factual evidence.

People are confabulating a diagnosis here, based upon next to no information. Would you want them to be your physician?

We see easily verifiable cases of mass hysteria regularly. How many people do you think went to the hospital complaining of COVID-19 like symptoms and upon inspection no illness was found? The only difference between that and mass hysteria is there was an actual disease affecting others.

I wouldn't want somebody without a medical degree to be my doctor, but I'd have no strong objection to random people privately discussing what they thought my disease was based on an anonymous report of the symptoms.

No, these are explictly not "verifiable cases".

Hypochondria is a thing. Triggering many with hpochondria is possible. But they won't all be in one class of the same school.

If you have half of all girls in a class hospitalized, it's downright ridiculous to claim hypochondria as the cause.

I was saying that mass hysteria exists, not trying to prove this instance was mass hysteria.

That said, if a third of my class was already going to the hospital because they were "poisoned," I could very easily see myself getting overly worried about my own health to the extent where I would join them in the hospital. And I wouldn't consider myself a hypochondriac by any means.