Can the Internet Cause Mental Illness?
In 1962, an epidemic of uncontrollable laughter spread from an all-girls boarding school in East Africa to multiple towns. The phenomenon perplexed local health officials, who concluded that the most likely explanation was “mass hysteria”. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, describes the 1962 laughing epidemic and other similar episodes, as well as a culture-bound syndrome, where people experience an illness that exists nowhere else in the world and seems to have no medical basis. According to …