Doctor: Teens' mystery illness not a hoax

[Javaman]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57372428/doctor-teens-mystery-illness-not-a-hoax/

(CBS News) Three more teenagers at an Upstate New York town have been diagnosed with a mysterious ticking and twitching. Doctors say it could be psychological.

Citizens demanded answers at Le Roy Central High School in Le Roy, N.Y., this past Saturday - the school where last fall a group of teenage girls started reporting mysterious fits of involuntary twitching.

With three new cases reported just this week, anxiety is growing.

Dr. Laszlo Mechtler is a neurologist at DENT Neurologic Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. He sat down with CBS News to explain his diagnosis: Conversion disorder.

more at link...

[PassingFair]

1. I think I've seen this before:

[obamanut2012]

10. +1

[DCKit]

2. I've seen three news stories on this, and read several OPs here.

However, I'll wait until the Doctors make a firm diagnosis before I start hollering about pollution and polluters who never seem to face the consequences of their actions.

Thus far, the story is just too weird and, given the amount of fracking going on, way too isolated and incident.

[On the Road]

3. "Anyone Afflicted by this Illness

will suffer from uncontrollable trembling of the left hand."

[TwilightGardener]

4. Tell the girls they'll have to give up texting and Twitter and Facebook until their conditions

improve (since the doc says it may trigger this)--I bet their conditions will improve. Miraculously.

[Javaman]

5. if that were the case, than it would be nationwide. nt

[Posteritatis]

6. Or, you know, not. (nt)

[obamanut2012]

11. You bet they would

And, don't allow any more interviews.

Cured in a week or two.

[obamanut2012]

7. Salem Witch Trials

Mass hysteria.

They need to take the attention away (TV interviews, computers, etc.), and I bet the girls will be "cured" quite quickly.

I was just reading a Huff Post article on this and watching videos the kids keep posting of themselves on social media. The school has bent over backwards to try and clear this up, but the parents keep blaming school personnel.

The doctors who keep saying "conversion disorder (mass hysteria)" keep getting shouted down.

This happens relatively frequently among teenaged female populations in schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria

[obamanut2012]

8. Huff Post article with videos

The girls are really liking the attention, imo. At least they haven't had anyone hanged yet.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/mystery-illness-is-social_n_1262480.html

[bawieland]

9. Factitious and Somatoform Disorders

It might be worth noting the difference between factitious and somatoform disorders, conditions both listed in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual IV (what therapists use for making diagnoses).

Factitious disorders are faked. A person deliberately tries to mislead someone into thinking something is medically wrong. The bizarre Munchausen by proxy cases belong to this, as do the more common incidinces of "malingering," or deliberately faking symptoms.

Somatoform disorders, on the other hand, are real in the sense that the symptoms are actually experienced. Someone with a conversion disorder (a kind of somatoform disorder) may actually be unable to see, even if a doctor determines there is no physical reason for blindness. A person with body dysmorphic disorder really does think there is something grotesquely wrong with a part of their body, even if everything is normal. These symptoms are experienced, not faked, even if they defy reason.

So-called "mass hysteria" is one of these somatoform disorders.

I have my suspicions about what's going on, but there's no possible way for me to know. But if it turns out there is not an environmental or viral/bacterial cause, it's still not necessarily true that these girls are fakers. My gut tells me that's what people are going to accuse them of, however.

[TheWraith]

13. Exactly. Too often people think "psychosomatic" means "faking it."

Take me, for instance. At a couple times, I've developed nervous tics and random muscle spasms. There was no medical reason for them--they were a reaction to excessive stress in my life. But I couldn't stop doing them. Likewise, someone who has a hysterical or psychosomatic illness doesn't necessarily mean they're "faking it," they may be legitimately unable to control their symptoms, even though those symptoms are caused by stress, or even just the belief that one has an illness.

[sakabatou]

14. My doc once thought that my partial "fading" was psychosomatic

until it was linked to my seizures.

My peripheral vision will sometimes fade from the corner to the center of the eye.

[hfojvt]

12. Le Roy seems to be just south and west of Rochester in Genesee County

otherwise I thought it was a township in Jefferson County.