The Razor-Thin Line Between Contagion and Connection | Dan Taberski | TED

I make audio documentaries, and I recently spent some time in a town called Le Roy, New York. It's a town about 50 miles outside of Buffalo. It's a small town. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Jell-O. (Laughter) There's a museum and everything. Anyway, in 2011, at the beginning of the school year, something strange happened in Le Roy. A student at Le Roy Junior-Senior High School, a cheerleader, she wakes up from a nap with a stutter, like a severe stammer, trouble speaking. And pretty soon, that turns into head tics and facial twitches, and then blurting out sounds and words. Symptoms that you'd associate with something like Tourette's syndrome. A couple of weeks later, while she's dealing with that, another student at the school comes down with the same symptoms: tics, spasms, barks, blurting out sounds and words. And it happens from 0 to 60 overnight, out of nowhere. And then it happens to another student. And then two more. This is Rose. Rose was in eighth grade at the time of the outbreak. (Recording) Rose: At first it was whispers. It was like, "Oh, it's this one girl. We don't know what's going on, blah blah. " And the next thing I know, it's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. Dan Taberski: Jessica was a senior at the time. Jessica: And I remember thinking, were they making it up? What is going on? DT: People thought they were faking it. Jessica: Everybody thought they might be faking it. And then my friend came to school the one day, and I was at my locker. And she came up to me and she was stuttering super bad. I'm like, "What are you doing? Stop fucking around. Why are you talking like that? " And she's like, "I can't. " She's, like, twitching, she's crying at that point, just trying to get out her words, and I'm like, "Holy shit. This is real. What happened? " DT: Within weeks, the case count hits double digits. All at the high school. All girls. An investigation begins. They test for Lyme disease. They test for heavy metals in the blood. Back at the school, they test for the water safety. air quality. They test for mold. And the only thing spreading faster than the contagion are the theories about what's causing it. Rose: I remember hearing at some point, since it was all girls, it must be a bad batch of tampons. (Laughter) DT: The tampon theory does not pan out. In fact, none of them do. After a month-long investigation, the state and the school board and the doctors involved, they come up with what they think is the answer. The outbreak ripping through the high school is a mass psychogenic illness, otherwise known as mass hysteria. Emily was in eighth grade when she came down with the symptoms herself. This is what her doctor told her. Emily: She basically said, "It's all in your head. You're fine. " How are you, as a medical professional, going to look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine. Stop thinking about it. You're fine, you're fine. DT: And she should be skeptical, right? Especially because she's a woman. Even the word hysteria has its roots in the Greek for uterus. For centuries, doctors would blame the wandering womb for all sorts of problems that women were having with their bodies, without really understanding what it was medically. Back in Le Roy, this is how Jessica reacted to the diagnosis. Jessica: I thought, "That's bullshit. I don't believe that. Seeing all these girls, they're not making it up. I just don't believe that that's the thing. After all of this, that's all it is? I just don't know how to believe that. DT: I love that. "I don't know how to believe that. " Not just "I don't believe that. " "I don't know how to believe it. " Here's what I have come to believe. I think we all need to start learning how to believe in mass hysteria, because while it is very rare, it is also very real. So say neurologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, so says the NIH. And it's a very specific type of contagion that says a lot about how we're connected as people. Mass psychogenic illness is the rapid spread of real physical symptoms from one person to the other. But those symptoms don't seem to have any organic cause. So you’ve got a limp, but your x-ray is normal. Or you’ve got neurological symptoms, but your MRI doesn’t show anything. Medically, these symptoms shouldn't be happening. But then they begin to spread from person to person. But it's not random. The spread of the contagion tends to be a function of how connected the victims are to each other. So students at a small town high school, or workers on a factory floor, or even nuns in a convent. In the Middle Ages, there were several cases reported in Europe in convents, including one extended case in France where a nun supposedly began meowing uncontrollably, only to have that symptom spread to the rest of the nuns in the convent. And then, of course, there's the witches of Salem, right? Perhaps the archetypical women being hysterical.

Many now believe that was a mass psychogenic illness. Why does it happen? There's usually some sort of underlying stress or trauma affecting the people involved. Like, for example, in the fall of 2001, when a mystery rash broke out in grade schools around the country, at least dozens and dozens of schools, hundreds of students affected. The rash would pass from student to student during the day in the school but then often disappear when the kid went home at night. And then it would reappear the next day and begin spreading all over again. Tests showed no bacteria, no virus, no toxic exposure that would explain it. Turns out what may have been happening is that it was fear of toxic exposure that caused the contagion. In fact, the mystery rash began on the very day that the news reported that a man in Florida had been diagnosed with anthrax, just weeks after they began appearing in envelopes after September 11th in people's mailboxes. Many epidemiologists now believe that the post-9/11 rash was a mass psychogenic illness, a real physical expression of the collective anxiety those kids were feeling at the time. It's actually why I don't even care for the phrase "mass psychogenic illness. " It's more polite, perhaps, but it's "mass hysteria" that really gets the messiness of it. It's not just medical. It's not just psychological. It's social. It's cultural. It's about all of us. And it's not just women. You may have heard of Havana Syndrome. That's the neurological medical mystery affecting foreign workers in the United States and in Canada. Many people believe that is a mass psychogenic illness. And these things don't just happen anywhere. They tend to happen at the stress points in the culture. Or as one expert put it to me, they tend to happen in the fissures of society. I want to play you some more tape. These are all taken from police body cams of police officers in the field. In each instance, the police officer has just come into contact with the street drug fentanyl. (Recording) It's so weird, man. He said he's floating. His legs are tingling. Yeah, my toes are tingling. We have fentanyl! You're good, you're good. Keep breathing. Hey, stay with me, OK? It's warrant officer. Possible exposure to fentanyl. I’m getting my -- you got yours out? All right. Relax. DT: You may have seen or heard footage like this in the news. It pops up all the time. Local news loves it. It makes great tape. We were able to track 332 cases of accidental fentanyl poisoning among police officers in the field -- passing out, tingling, rapid heart rate -- all just because of proximity to the drug fentanyl, sometimes even just knowing its presence on the scene. But of those 332 cases that we were able to track the number of actual toxicology reports that showed fentanyl in those police officers' system at the time, as far as we can tell, one. At a state prison in Alaska. And even that one hasn't been independently confirmed. In fact, the American Society of Medical Toxicology says it is near impossible to overdose on fentanyl in this way. And yet, it keeps happening. But it doesn't happen to doctors and nurses who handle fentanyl in hospital settings. It doesn't even really happen to fentanyl abusers who are obviously handling the drug all the time. It's only in this one specific preexisting social group: male police officers, incidentally. The phenomenon that many people believe is a mass psychogenic illness, with a particularly modern twist. The thing about mass hysteria is that it's a line of sight thing, right? Part of the reason you get the symptoms is because you see somebody having the symptoms themselves. But with the advent of police body cams, each psychogenic overdose also creates a video. And that video then gets seen by other police officers, which potentially creates more psychogenic overdoses, which creates more videos -- you see the problem -- creating perhaps the perfect vector for spread. Back in Le Roy, the outbreak there followed a pattern of many mass psychogenic illnesses. It came on strong, it wreaked havoc, and it faded away. Why there? It's impossible to say for sure, but we do now know that some of the girls were experiencing their own personal, private, traumatic situations that may have contributed to their susceptibility. And of course, once mass hysteria sets in, it kind of brings its own stress and trauma, as does just being an American teenage girl today. Before it was over, 19 girls at the high school came down with symptoms. All of them somehow connected to the others. Several of them were on the soccer team together. Several of them shared a very specific art class, and two of them were best friends. By the time summer break arrived, the symptoms were all but gone from the high school. Almost. Remember Rose?

She was the one with the tampon theory. Rose never caught those Tourette’s-like symptoms that ripped through the high school so severely because Rose already had Tourette's. She has since she was three. Rose: I had always had very prominent tics from the time I was diagnosed, like I had facial twitches, I would go through spurts where I would be throwing things. I was always very loud, like I always have very loud vocal tics. You will always hear me. Everybody always knows who I am. DT: Unfortunately for Rose, when people with tic disorders are around other people who tic, both people tend to tic more severely. So you can imagine when 19 other girls are walking the halls ticking, Rose’s tics got worse. Much, much worse. Rose: So I had a tic where I would punch myself right here in the face, over and over. DT: And your chin. That was your tic. Rose: My tic was literally to coldcock myself. I have permanent damage in my right eye because my other tic was to punch myself in the eye. I was literally beating the shit out of myself. DT: Rose had a really difficult year, to say the least. But it was something she told me about her life now that struck me about this idea of contagion and connection. Rose: So I volunteer at Tourette Syndrome Camp every summer, right? DT: Wow. Rose: And I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life every year. It's so amazing. But we all tic so much more because we’re all ticking. DT: Does that feel good or bad? Rose: Oh, I love it. (Laughter) DT: At Rose's Tourette's Camp, when the contagion comes on, they let it happen. They don't hold back. Rose: It is so worth every second of it, because you are having the best time and you are around your people. And there’s something called tic shopping. That’s the actual name for it. And you can pick up other people’s tics. DT: They're literally sharing their symptoms. They're passing them back and forth unconsciously. And even if just for one weird, humid, buggy weekend in the summer, they're able to revel in those symptoms and really appreciate the connection that it gives them. Rose: So I always have to take the day after camp off, because I’ll come home with God knows what tics. But it's like the best feeling ever. It is DT: The line between contagion and connection is a thin one. Sometimes it's hardly there at all. Thank you. (Applause)