The 1955 ME/CFS outbreak at the Royal Free Hospital in London was once erroneously claimed to be mass hysteria by disgraced psychiatrists McEvedy & Beard.
Now the mass psychogenic illness quacks have struck again, irresponsibly jumping to the conclusion that when 21 people suddenly fell ill at London Heathrow Airport on 8 September 2025, this was caused by mass hysteria.
In the
Guardian newspaper, Dr Robert Bartholomew, a University of Auckland sociologist said: "what happened at Heathrow is almost certainly an episode of mass psychogenic illness that is anxiety-based".
Professor Simon Wessely was more guarded, and said that it was "a bit early" to come to judgments about the Heathrow event and it was unclear whether there was an unusual odour or what investigations were done to eliminate other causes. But he added: "If all these come to nothing, then yes, this may be an episode of what we now call mass sociogenic illness."
And in his
Conversation article, Kit Yates, Professor of Mathematical Biology and Public Engagement at the University of Bath, goes with the mass psychogenic illness explanation for the Heathrow event.
Well it
turns out that
the Heathrow event was likely caused by someone spraying CS gas, and this person has now been arrested.
So these psychogenic illness quacks, who so quickly jumped to a conclusion about psychogenic causes, once again have egg on their faces.
Simon Wessely is of course famous for saying back in 1994 that: "ME is simply a belief, the belief that one has an illness called ME". Ref:
here.
www.bohs.org
