How sick school kids in Tennessee may explain First Responder fentanyl exposure

In 1998, at a High School in Tennessee, a teacher reported smelling gasoline and experiencing a headache.  Soon after the school was evacuated 80 students plus 19 staff members became ill.  When the school was reopened 5 days later, after no source of illness was found, another 71 people reported symptoms and were treated.  How could this happen with no identifiable environmental exposure?  How was it that students from over a dozen classrooms spread across campus were effected while others in the same environment were not ill?  What was making these kids, and adults, sick?

Why all the hysteria?

Well, it turns out, that's exactly what was happening.

Thanks to the folks at Radiolab for their recent episode that got me thinking down this route.  They talk about the exposure of a Kentucky EMT to what was thought to be a skin to skin exposure of fentanyl.  Toxicologists, and anyone who pays attention, will tell you that that is nearly impossible, yet the EMT manifested physical signs of illness.  Dozens of reports of physically ill first responders fill our feeds and we worry about being exposed.

The official term for what happened at the school is Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI) and is described as when a group of people believe they have become sick for the same reason when no physical or environmental cause for the illness can be identified.  It commonly happens to groups who work together or who have been in close proximity for an extended period.

While those of us in the disciplines may not be in direct physical contact, research is suggesting that with exposure to similar experiences via news, video and our pal social media, we may be able to explain many of the cases of "fentanyl exposure" as Mass Psychogenic Illness.  Again, let me stress that this condition is not someone who fakes symptoms.  This is the mind physically making the body ill due to stress.  Persons experiencing MPI will describe a fear of impending doom, rapid breathing, a choking sensation or " I can't get enough air" as well as hand and arm spasms.

These symptoms are real, the physical impacts can be intense, but they are not the same symptoms as exposure to fentanyl.

MPI has been around as long as people have been putting pen to paper.  Nuns who began to meow, factory workers who claimed a mysterious bug was making them all sick, even claims of demonic mass possession have now been attributed to MPI. Most recently we have been using technology to spread MPI faster than ever.  While the kids back in 1998 didn't have twitter, they certainly knew how to spread information through their social groups, partially explaining why some kids got sick and others didn't.  This could also explain why some first responders go down with symptoms more than others and why janitors and other cleaning crews do not.  Their circle doesn't share the same exposure to the hysteria, so symptoms do not manifest.

But it isn't just perceived exposure to a toxin that can cause MPI.

Remember a few years back all those creepy clowns spotted in the woods?  News stations interviewed multiple eye witnesses in multiple states and jurisdictions, police added extra patrols, kids were brought in at night.  It was blamed on satanists, pedophiles, kids doing pranks anything but people manifesting sightings of clowns in the forest likely due to MPI.  They didn't imagine it and aren't trying to "fit in" they physically believe they saw it when there was nothing there to see.

In short, it is believed that the group dynamic creates a stress level that the mind can not easily explain away.  People begin to believe what they read from their social group more than what they may hear from professionals or experts that contradicts or challenges what their trusted group believes.  This stress, combined with an already heightened fear in certain communities, could be magnifying the MPI response causing more pronounced and rapid onset of symptoms.

In short, we are literally worrying ourselves sick.