Jones T F
Tennessee Department of Health, Nashville, USA.
Am Fam Physician. 2000 Dec 15;62(12):2649-53, 2655-6.
Mass psychogenic illness is characterized by symptoms, occurring among a group of persons with shared beliefs regarding those symptoms, that suggest organic illness but have no identifiable environmental cause and little clinical or laboratory evidence of disease. Mass psychogenic illness typically affects adolescents or children, groups under stress and females disproportionately more than males. Symptoms often follow an environmental trigger or illness in an index case. They can spread rapidly by apparent visual transmission, may be aggravated by a prominent emergency or media response, and frequently resolve after patients are separated from each other and removed from the environment in which the outbreak began. Physicians should consider this diagnosis when faced with a cluster of unexplained acute illness.
群体性心因性疾病的特征是，在一群对这些症状有共同信念的人当中出现的症状，这些症状提示有器质性疾病，但没有可识别的环境病因，且几乎没有疾病的临床或实验室证据。群体性心因性疾病通常对青少年或儿童、处于压力下的群体影响更大，女性受影响的比例高于男性。症状通常在一个指示病例出现环境触发因素或疾病之后出现。它们可通过明显的视觉传播迅速蔓延，可能因突出的紧急情况或媒体反应而加重，并且在患者彼此隔离并脱离疫情爆发的环境后，症状常常会缓解。当面对一群不明原因的急性疾病时，医生应考虑这一诊断。
