Mass Hysteria

Mass hysteria—other names include collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior—is the spontaneous manifestation of the same or similar hysterical physical symptoms by more than one person.

A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs when a group of people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment. Sometimes referred to as mass psychogenic illness or epidemic hysteria.

Read more about Mass Hysteria:  Characteristics

Famous quotes containing the words mass and/or hysteria:

    No man’s thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive ... and impoverished.
    Roland Barthes (1915–1980)