#mass sociogenic illness

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: John D. Haltigan, Tamara M. Pringsheim, Gayathiri Rajkumar

Published: Feb 2023

Abstract

There has been an increasing recognition among both medical and psychological professionals, as well as the public media, of a concerning trend for child and adolescent users of audiovisual-based, algorithmic social media platforms (e.g., TikTok) to present with or claim functional psychiatric impairment that is inconsistent with or distinct from classic psychiatric nosology. In this short communication, we provide a detailed historical overview of this transdiagnostic phenomenon and suggest a conceptual model to organize thinking and research examining it. We then discuss the implications of our suggested model for accurate assessment, diagnosis, and medical-psychiatric treatment. We believe there is an urgent need for focused empirical research investigation into this concerning phenomenon that is related to the broader research and discourse examining social media influences on mental health.

Abbreviations

ADHD, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder; DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder; FTLB, Functional tic-like behaviors; MPD, Multiple Personality Disorder; NSSI, Non-suicidal self-Injury; OCD, Obessive-Compulsive Disorder; TS, Tourette's Syndrome.

--

The global burden of mental illness in children and youth is a leading cause of disability globally, accounting for ∼13% of the total burden of disease in this age group [1,2]. Notably, this estimate excluded personality disorders given limited epidemiological data at the time, suggesting that the global burden of mental illness and children and youth is likely underestimated. There are robust sex differences in the expression of common clinical, personality, and behavioral traits and disorders, especially during adolescence (e.g., females:neuroticism and depressive/internalizing disorders and symptomatology; males:aggression and antisocial/externalizing disorders and symptomatology [[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]]). However, greater understanding of the overlap among their symptom expression and sex-linked prevalences, as well as their social and biological correlates is needed. Recent quantitative work examining their symptom overlap has enhanced insight into the transdiagnostic dimensional structure of common clinical and personality psychopathology [[13], [14], [15]].

At the same time that our understanding of transdiagnostic relations among common clinical and personality disorders and symptomatology has progressed, there has emerged an increasingly urgent need to understand the magnitude and developmental significance of social media use on mental health [[16], [17], [18]], especially during adolescence given it is a critical developmental window during which emotion regulation capacities are unfolding [12,16,17,[19], [20], [21], [22]]. The urgency of this need has been magnified by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic which has been associated with increased social media use and perceived individual social isolation and psychological/psychiatric distress [[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]], including suicide-related mortality [29].

One social media site that has received increasing media and research scrutiny as a potential conduit or ‘spread vector’ for mental illness symptoms and disorders is TikTok [[30], [31], [32]]. There has been a well-documented uprise in popular content creators with self-described tics or Tourette's Syndrome (TS) and other self-diagnosed mental health symptomatology on the TikTok platform [[37], [71]] leading some to characterize the phenomenon as “TikTok's sick-role subculture” [30]. This uptick has coincided with increasing numbers of youth who have presented to clinical providers or psychiatric services during the COVID-19 pandemic with what have been termed functional tic-like behaviors (FTLBs) [31,33,34]. Similar phenomenon has also been recently chronicled with respect to dissociative identity disorder (DID) [35].

These more recent examples of mental health-related issues appearing with notable penetrance in the social media ecosystem have emerged within the context of a broader fusion and coalescence of individual self-diagnosis, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, autism, and gender identity-related conditions on social media platforms, perhaps most notably on the social media site Tumblr during the first decade of the 2000s [36], but also Instagram and most recently on TikTok as well [[37], [38], [39]]. The continued evolution of this trend underscores an urgent need for increased understanding of the influence of social media on mental health, including its phenotypic clinical presentations and the possibility that increasingly algorithmic social media platforms may serve as a vehicle of transmission for social contagion of self-diagnosed mental illness conditions. Moreover, a greater understanding of the contributions of both personality and common clinical psychopathology to the ways in which social media platforms impact, facilitate, and ultimately inform the emerging debate about the definitions and contours of what is and is not considered mental ill-health is needed.

1. Audiovisually immersive social media: TikTok

TikTok was initially launched as a platform for users to post short clips of dancing, singing and comedy. The social media app launched in 2018 and had approximately one billion active monthly users worldwide by 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this number increased. TikTok has a distinct algorithm, which allows users to receive content tailored to them, based on their preferences, interests and current state of mind. Depending on the length and type of interaction on a post, TikTok algorithms curate an audiovisually entertaining, sensory-immersive stream of personalized videos to their "For You" page.

User content on TikTok has evolved from the app's launch, with more content creators advocating for awareness surrounding issues such as feminism, mental illness, body positivity, disabilities, and gender identity. Notably, there have been many accounts that have received millions of views for their journey with their disability and/or mental illness, especially TS. These accounts have grown in popularity and their content has appeared to gain widespread traction as viewers engage with the content and learn how content creators perform everyday activities, while having tics that can largely affect their functionality in day-to-day life.

2. Before TikTok: Tumblr and the origins of online identity fandoms

Tumblr is a social media network that was founded in 2007, reaching peak user popularity in early 2014 based on the number of daily blog posts [36,40]. The creation of ‘fandoms’ (fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture) provided users who typically were seen as outcasts, a sense of community and belonging, as demonstrated by its company's mission statement; “Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your people” [40]. Journalist and internet historian Katherine Dee has written “Tumblr became a place for people to fantasize and build upon ideas about real identities. There was an aesthetic dimension, a dimension of roleplay, a feeling of camaraderie with others—but it was often pure fiction [41].” This identity element was also noted as a feature of social media more broadly: as Moreno et al. [39] noted “Social media also allow users to create online identities that may reflect their real identity or a newly-developing identity.” Mental health content such as eating disorders and depression, along with numerous other common clinical mental disorders, were often disclosed on Tumblr [36]. Accounts promoting eating disorders, self-mutilation, and suicide became popular and with half of Tumblr's visitor base being under the age of 25, raising concern for the potentially deleterious effects of social media use on adolescent mental health. Tumblr implemented a policy against blogs of this nature in 2012. Similar issues also manifested on the social media platform Instagram where non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) content and corresponding NSSI-related identities became a concern [39].

3. Personality and common clinical psychopathology: mental illness as identity-selection?

3.1. Tics, Tic DO, and Tourette's syndrome (TS)

An increasing number of reports from the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia have noted an increase in functional tic-like behaviors (FTLB) both prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, coinciding with an increase in social media content related to Tourette syndrome and tics [[31], [32], [33], [34],[42], [43], [44]]. These FTLBs differ from classic Tourette syndrome (TS) both neurotypically and phenotypically. Neurotypically, FTLB age of onset (typically 12–25 years) is later in development relative to classic TS with onset in early childhood and improvement of tic behavior in late adolescence. Phenotypically, FTLBs are characterized by an abrupt and explosive presentation of symptoms over hours or days of mostly complex phonic and motor tic-like behaviors with high severity, with many patients able to provide the exact date of onset or inciting event. In contrast to the rostro-caudal evolution of motor tic symptoms which develops over years in TS, FTLBs often predominantly affect the upper limbs, with complex movements of the arms and hands, including clapping, sign language, throwing objects, banging oneself on the chest, head or thigh, or hitting other people.

In TS, motor tics usually precede verbal tics, with the most common vocal tic being throat clearing, and less than 15% of those diagnosed with TS ever developing any complex vocalizations. In contrast, complex vocalizations are a prominent feature of FTLBs, including a large repertoire of random words, phrases, or offensive statements. Tourette's Syndrome is a highly prevalent disorder in youth, affecting approximately 1% of school-age boys and 0.25% of school-age girls [45]. The mean age onset of tic symptoms is approximately 6 years of age for both males and females as is the peak clinical presentation (when received at a specialist clinic) at 10 years of age. Some studies suggest there is a small but significant difference in tic severity between boys and girls, with girls having slightly more severe and more persistent tic symptoms with a higher resolution of tic symptoms in late teens for boys [46,47].

A large majority of those demonstrating FTLBs are adolescent females, which also forms a core user group of TikTok. Patients with FTLBs are also more commonly diagnosed with anxiety and depression, than those with TS which frequently co-occurs with neuropsychiatric conditions such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) [33,34]. FTLBs are in keeping with a Functional Neurological Disorder in the context of anxiety and depressive symptoms and diagnoses, and more broadly with affective dysregulation. Many presenting to psychiatric clinics have also noted they have seen popular videos on Tourette's syndrome and have since started sharing the same tics [32].

3.2. Dissociative identity & other mental disorders

A similar phenomenon has been observed in individuals with self-diagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or adjacent quasi-psychiatric terms such as “person with Dissociated Identities” and “plurals” [35,48]. Indeed, the evolution of the online culture associated with DID or multiple personality disorder (MPD) has been richly chronicled [49]. The pluralist's online culture is an umbrella moniker that includes five distinct languageidentifiers regarding the etiology of Plurality defined by Plurals themselves including: (1): Traumagenic-Adaptive; (2) Traumagenic; (3) Traumagenic-Cultural; (4) Endogenic; and (5) Exogenic [35]. Notably, the endogenic and exogenic identifiers were identifiers created ‘de-novo’ and have no relation to empirical nomenclature. Based on these identifiers, three groups of plurals have been described. While the first two groups are related to conventional psychiatric clinical interpretations of and empirical research into DID (e.g., as potentially trauma-based), the third group is a pseudo-psychiatric group that includes those who identify as plurals but as not disordered [35].

Hashtags such as #DID, as well as #borderlinepersonalitydisorder and #bipolardisorderhave received millions of views, and popular content creators post videos capturing them ‘switching alters’ (i.e., plurals). Impressions from both the lay public and clinical professionals have converged in the observation that a salient feature of this emerging DID and self-diagnosed mental illness social media posting and discourse is that it has a distinct appearance of being romanticized, glamourized, and sexualized (or possibly malingered) [[48], [49], [50], [51], [52]]. Accordingly, this may be one explanation for why many users claim to have ‘rare’ disorders like DID (with prevalence estimates ranging from 0.01% to 14% depending on sample characteristics and the methodology used to assess DID; especially among children the disorder is extremely rare [[53], [54], [55], [56]]), as well as the emergence of a ‘plurals community’ for DID. Such plurals communities include non-traditional peri-psychiatric non-disordered notions of DID that community members have created on their own and are liberated from conventional psychiatric nosology. It has been noted that non-diagnosed (or undiagnosed) claims of DID can negatively impact others in the DID plurals community who have clinically diagnosed DID and are seeking functional reintegration as a therapy endpoint [35].

4. Diathesis-stress: an integrative model of vulnerability towards understanding social media, personality-identity confusion, and psychopathology

Although many social media users and online community members will be exposed to both media and community content that reflects peri-psychiatric conditions or self-diagnosed conditions, most will not adopt peri-psychiatric behaviors or conditions and/or seek professional clinical assistance. Indeed, positive effects of online social communities for coping with stress, relationship-building, and for enhancing feelings of belonging and shared experience among people experiencing mental illness, as well as other minority and marginalized groups, have been described [35,36,38,57,58]. What is needed in our view is an integrative explanatory framework for what places a seemingly increasing subset of individuals at-risk for or more vulnerable to adopting peri-psychiatric behaviors or conditions. The diathesis-stress model of individual differences to environmental context [[59], [60], [61], [62]] provides an organizing heuristic to begin to develop such an explanatory framework. Classic diathesis-stress or vulnerability-stress models postulate that poor developmental experiences (e.g., stressful or resource-poorenvironments) are most likely to impact the development of individuals who carry vulnerability factors, which are latent diatheses that result in increased risk for psychopathology when “triggered” by exposure to negative or otherwise stressful developmental experiences. Latent diatheses reflect biological or social-cognitive predispositions to react and behave in specific ways; psychopathology reflects signs, symptoms, and behaviors associated with mental illness or inconsistent with mental health in the normative range. While not inherently stressful per se, the social media environment is a relatively novel environment in evolutionary history and the negotiation of social relationships through the scopic medium of increasingly algorithmic, audiovisual social media may pose a unique set of conditions that place individuals with latent diathesis to personality and behavioral psychopathology, particularly that defined by deficits in emotion regulation and negative emotionality (NE) [63], at increased risk for the development of psychopathology [19,36,64,65].

Relative to males, adolescent females are at higher risk for depressive and anxiety-related disorders [6], along with higher levels of negative emotionality and personality trait neuroticism [7,9]. Accordingly, one possibility in the case of ‘TikTok tics’ is that the functional purpose of FTLBs—which are disproportionately prevalent in females based on empirical data to date – is to seek affirmation and/or draw attention to oneself to acquire social capital in online communities [36,66] while simultaneously maintaining an unconventional peri-psychiatric identity that may mask feelings of anxiety, depression, and possibly lower self-esteem [19,30,67]. It is also plausible that the social stress and isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic operated in a dual-risk capacity in addition to unique personality and behavioral factors associated with social media use and participation in online communities themselves [19,64,65,68]. In any event, what seems to be clearly indicated by the preliminary clinical, empirical, and journalistic information is that for a subset of predominately adolescent-aged female youth, use of audiovisual-based social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, especially at moderate and high levels, is associated with the manifestation and course of FTLBs, less self-reported levels of psychological well-being [69], increased internalizing symptomatology [70], and self-diagnosis of various mental illnesses [71]. With appropriate diagnosis and intervention, particularly identification and cognitive behavioral treatment of emotional distress, social and/or generalized anxiety and affective dysregulation, youth with FTLBs have demonstrated a decrease in severity or remission of symptoms in the short-term [72]. This pattern of successful intervention in youth with FTLBs underscores the importance of widespread awareness of the possibility of social contagion influences on mental illness and identity confusion among young people, their parents, and mental health care practitioners [30,73,74].

5. Social awareness and implications for mental health assessment

Concerning the broader question of whether social media is causally related to the rise in rates of adolescent mood disorders, self-harm, and suicide since 2010 in the USA and UK, it has been pointed out that the rise paralleled the years “when American teens were obtaining smart phones and becoming daily users of social media platforms such as Instagram” [17]. The same is true of the unique clinical presentation of FTLBs which first emerged into clinical awareness in 2019 in Germany [32], as well as with the increasing recognition of the DID-plurality community and emergent discourse [35]. More broadly, there has been a recognition of vast online ‘neurodivergence’ ecosystem in which classical mental illness symptoms and diagnoses are viewed less as mental health concerns that require professional attention, but rather as consumer identities or character traits that make individuals sharper and more interesting than others around them [49,[75], [76], [77]].

The above recognition of this ostensibly heterogeneous sociogenic illness behavior, loosely bounded by classical notions of mental health diagnoses, suggests the possibility that the increasingly algorithmic [78] and audiovisually immersive social media environment is a scopic medium [79] in which various ‘neurodivergent’ or sick role [30] identities or personas can be claimed at will, at any given moment—with no antecedent biological basis or tether to empirical reality—with positive social and emotional reinforcement and resonance from the associated online community (e.g., via the use of hashtags; user-to-user sharing and amplification of content) [36]. This social and emotional resonance may amplify and reinforce identification with the persona and may even predict later behaviors in line with it [80]. Sharing emotions, feelings, and thoughts around one's self-diagnosed mental illness identity within a solely techno-mediated scopic performative milieu in which such feelings, emotions, and beliefs are amplified may increase the likelihood that the ‘self-diagnosed’ identity is reified and incorporated into one's self-concept, regardless of its correspondence to external reality and conventional taxonomies of mental illness [36,80]. Said differently, the capacity for emotion regulation around the nature of one's self -identity is increasingly being techno-mediated externally, rather than internally within the self.

Recognizing and responding to this possibility by researchers and mental health practitioners is an urgent public health priority in our view, given extant evidence suggesting that the social media environment is a mental health risk factor for adolescents and youth struggling with elevated personality psychopathology and inchoate personal identities during the transition to young adulthood [17,19,20,22]. In addition, whether and how social media technology is a contributing force in both potentially inducing sociogenic illness while simultaneously influencing how professional mental health organizations evolve with respect to understanding and defining mental illness—thus potentially immunizing current sociogenic illness from classical diagnoses of mental illness—is crucial to take stock of in order to rigorously inform public health discourse and policy [81].

--

Also:

Abstract

Currently, we are facing a new manifestation of functional neurological disorder presenting with functional Tourette-like behavior (FTB). This study aimed to show characteristics of this phenotype presenting as an outbreak of “mass social media-induced illness” (MSMI) and to explore predisposing factors. Between 5–9/2021, we prospectively investigated 32 patients (mean/median age: 20.1/18 years, range: 11–53 years, n = 16 females) with MSMI-FTB using a neuro-psychiatric examination, a comprehensive semi-structured interview and aspects of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostic System. In contrast to tics, numbers of complex movements and vocalizations were nine times greater than of “simple” symptoms, and of vocalizations one and a half times greater than of movements. In line with our hypothesis of MSMI, symptoms largely overlapped with those presented by German YouTuber Jan Zimmermann justifying his role as “virtual” index case in current outbreak. Typically, symptoms started abruptly at a mean age of 19 years and deteriorated gradually with no differences between males and females. In all patients, we identified timely-related psychological stressors, unconscious intrapsychic conflicts, and/or structural deficits. Nearly all patients (94%) suffered from further psychiatric symptoms including abnormalities in social behavior (81%), obsessive-compulsive behavior (OCB) (47%), Tourette syndrome (TS) (47%), anxiety (41%), and depression (31%), about half (47%) had experienced bullying, and 75% suffered from coexisting somatic diseases. Our data suggest that pre-existing abnormalities in social behavior and psychiatric symptoms (OCB, anxiety, and depression), but also TS in combination with timely-related psychological stressors, unconscious intrapsychic conflicts, and structural deficits predispose to contagion with MSMI-FTB.

[coulsonlives]

I just had to share this video because holy shit, it hits the nail right on the head! So well spoken. This stuff needs to be circulated more, esp with the growing number of people thinking they have this because of misinformation, or just outright faking it.

[angelgrian]

i wish people were more open to critically evaluating their identity

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #5673:

When you've written a character with canonical DID for many years, and you're now in the unfortunate position where you're growing more and more uncomfortable with actually sharing that work with others in the fandom. For starters, the canon representation of the disorder is highly theatrical, exaggerated, and unrealistic, but you want to write the disorder more realistically. And you know, with all the performative crap floating around, someone who doesn't know what they're talking about is going to point fingers and say, "you're not doing it properly", even though you're actually trying to make it more realistic and grounded. Secondly, so many people, mainly minors but many adults as well, have been force-fed disinformation on tiktok and other social media, and there's an epidemic of people thinking this disorder presents very garishly and theatrically, and getting it into their heads that they, too, have the disorder without any confirmation, despite having totally unrelated symptoms they have only vaguely associated with the disorder because it's all they see on social media. And you don't want to appeal to that community because it's harmful and dangerous for the individuals - so harmful that lots of academic studies are actually giving it a name, ie. mass sociogenic illness. Similar to the "tiktok tics" or "functional tic-like disorder". So you're feeling totally disincentivised to share any of your work, because you don't want reminders of any of those things.

[maaarine]

Are Iranian schoolgirls being poisoned by toxic gas? (BBC News, March 03 2023)

“The first known case was reported at a school in the city of Qom, when 18 schoolgirls fell ill and were taken to hospital on 30 November.

Since then, at least 58 schools in eight provinces have been affected, according to local media.

Most cases have involved girls - at both primary and high schools - although there have been some reports of boys and teachers affected.

The BBC has analysed dozens of videos posted to social media and has verified many of the school locations filmed.

Many of these show young people in distress in school settings, with some being loaded into ambulances and others lying in hospital beds. Others show ambulances arriving and crowds gathered outside school gates.

One pupil at a school in Shahryar, near Tehran, said she and her classmates smelled "something very strange". It was "so unpleasant, like rotten fruit but much more pungent," she told BBC Persian.

The following day "many of the students fell ill and didn't come to school, our English literature teacher also fell ill," she said.

"When I went home, I was feeling dizzy and sick, my mum was worried cause I was so pale and out of breath.""Fortunately I recovered soon," she said. "Most of the kids in our school recovered in 24 hours."

She said the school's headmistress and principals were "scared", adding that after reports of cases at other schools surfaced they "came and told us students to not talk about what had happened".

Government officials have given conflicting reasons for the pupils' illness and Iran's President, Ebrahim Raisi, has ordered an inquiry to get to the "root cause".

Many in Iran believe students are being deliberately poisoned in an attempt to close girls' schools, which have been one of the centres of anti-government protests since September.

In Iran, almost all schools are single sex.

Some pupils and parents suggested that schoolgirls may have been targeted for taking part in recent anti-government protests.

But the cause of illness remains unclear. (…)

While not ruling out a possible toxic substance, both Prof Hay and Mr Kaszeta suggested psychological factors could play a part.

Prof Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at King's College London, said several "key epidemiological factors" led him to believe these were not a chain of poisonings, but were instead a case of "mass sociogenic illness" - in which symptoms spread among a group with no obvious biomedical cause.

The spread of cases across the country and the fact it has been predominantly affecting schoolgirls, but not boys or adults, were central to his conclusion, he said.

The nature of the symptoms and the fact patients quickly recovered were also key, he said.

In cases of mass sociogenic illness - which used to be described as "mass hysteria" - the symptoms experienced are real, but they are caused by anxiety, not toxic poisoning, Prof Wessely said.

"The early stages of poisoning by most things are pretty similar, your pulse starts to race, you feel faint, you go pale, you get butterflies in your stomach, you feel shaky."

These symptoms could be from an infection, poisoning or a mass anxiety, he said.

Against a backdrop of harsh government repression of protest, Prof Wessely said it was "not at all surprising that you would get this happening now in Iranian schools".

The Iranian cases appeared to be "very reminiscent" of outbreaks of undiagnosed illness in Kosovo in 1990 and the occupied West Bank in 1986, he said.

No biomedical cause was found in either and experts believe they were the result of mass sociogenic illness, Prof Wessely said.

RUSI's Mr Kaszeta, said: "We have to accept the distinct possibility that we will not know what happened or that, actually, multiple different things happened and we're muddling them up together."”

[hackernewsrobot]

Stop that It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/145/2/476/6356504 Comments

[hairbrush9]

Listened to the trueanon ep about fent and how the DEA basically sent out internal memos to every law enforcement agency they are connected to that said (obvious lie) fentanyl would be lethal upon skin contact. And this was so effective that you can find many videos of cops having panic attacks because they genuinely believe the information. It's a mass sociogenic illness, only instead of teenage girls believing they have TikTok induced Tourette's syndrome , its cops having panic attacks from touching a dime bag and it's being broadcasted via YouTube videos of body cams

[officialspec]

the 2nd link doesn't seem to be working for me :o do you have the title of the article so i can look it up?

OOPS ok i tried linking directly to the pdf instead of using a referral link so i changed that in the op but here it is again for u <3 if the link still doesnt work the paper is called 'stop that! it’s not tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness'

[ben-marco]

I want to preface this by saying that it's okay if my blog is not for you. I do not describe myself as pro-psych and I acknowledge that the field has its problems, some of which have affected me and my loved ones personally. But I am certainly not anti-psych and certainly not "pro psych abolition." Can you elaborate on what exactly it is that the state does to you when you receive a CDD diagnosis, also?

The point of the post was not to say that online spaces for dissociative disorders (any mental health disorder, really) are not useful. The point of the post was not to say that everyone should seek official diagnosis no matter what, or to say that nothing pwCDDs say online is valid or worth listening to.

The point of the post was to stress that online spaces for OSDD/DID and other disorders can become echo chambers and that misinformation can, and often does, go unchecked. I totally agree with you that what we hear from others in these spaces ought to be critically examined. We also ought to critically examine how much time we are spending in these spaces and how they are affecting our symptoms. Nobody in a Discord server or online forum can diagnose you with anything, but it's no secret that these spaces are the main driver behind the current "epidemic" of sociogenic illnesses, especially people claiming to have CDDs.

Below the cut, I have linked some articles that may be of interest. I have tried to select those that are Open Access. I have PDFs of them that I can send along on request.

These were all found on Google Scholar by searching for "sociogenic dissociative identity disorder".

This might be controversial, and that's fine with me, but if you are new to discovering your DID/OSDD, please be mindful of how much time you are spending in online DID/OSDD forums and groups. It is very easy for these spaces to become echo chambers, and sociogenic illness does exist.

Talking to other people with DID/OSDD can be helpful for figuring things out, but be careful not to blindly absorb whatever people tell you.

Ultimately, figuring out your condition and the way your system works is between you and a licensed professional, not between you and people in a Discord server.

Some of us learned this lesson the hard way, and I imagine many young systems are still going to be learning it the hard way when they have to untangle real information about their symptoms from what strangers online have told them about their symptoms.

[justanothersyscourse]

Well

That’s interesting

Psychiatrists identify a new mass sociogenic illness spread through social media (tourette)

[pkmn-conspiracies]

MISSINGNO AND THE "GLITCH" POKÉMON

this’ll be a very long post, and i feel bad for clogging your dashboard, so the full post is under the cut!

hoo boy, this is going to get weird. if you thought that mythical pokémon were stretches of the imagination, you definitely haven't heard of this strange, reality shattering group of cryptids.

ORIGINS OF GLITCH POKÉMON

it's not really known when rumors of these pokémon actually started, but, from personal experience, they've been around for a good while– enough for them to be popular elementaire school ghost stories. there have been an extremely low amount of reported sightings of these pokémon, if you could even call them that, which, we'll get to later. for some reason, most sightings occur within the kantonese island of guren, or cinnabar island– but the mainland is also a notable hotspot for these occurrences.

from most eye witness accounts, the physicality of glitch pokémon are.. strange, to say the least. most are completely unable to provide any sort of description, citing no possible human word that could be even remotely accurate to what they had seen. for those that are able to say something, they are described as extremely large– allegedly ranging all the way from 3m - 26.7m (10' - 81'80"). their appearances are said to be hidden in a static-like fog, although there are a couple of people who claim to have seen them, unobscured, and that they looked similar to complete fossilized specimens of kabutops or aerodactyl. in kalos, many of these pokémon are reported to look somewhat like a shiny bulbasaur.

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

in an unsurprising twist, there were a few of these witnesses who attempted to battle glitch pokémon. for some reason, some of them have reported that their battles have ranged on for days at a time– even though no sudden disappearances of them have been documented. some of these glitch pokémon will spontaneously burst into flames, while others seem to be inflicted with poison of unknown origin; every single trainer reported strange effects upon their own pokémon during battle, but, once their battles have concluded, these injuries miraculously healed as though nothing had happened.

it's important to note that these "pokémon" likely aren't actual pokémon. based on these trainers' accounts, they don't actually have any traditional offensive attacks that other pokémon have. this could suggest that they don't possess the element-channeling organelles that are signature for the domain pokémonica, which means that they aren't actually pokémon– at least not under the current definition of a pokémon.

POSSIBLE THEORIES

so– what the actual fuck? no, like, seriously, what the fuck? why are dozens of people reporting these sightings, and why are all of them somehow consistent in their stories– even when they have never spoken with one another personally?

HALLUCINATIONS

POSSIBLE SIGHTINGS OF LEGENDARY/MYTHICAL POKÉMON

the first and most widely accepted theory is that these people are suffering from a mass sociogenic illness, which causes them to vividly hallucinate for prolonged periods of time. and honestly? i really don't think that's the case. it's basically impossible for so many people, scattered around the world with no contact between each other, to all hallucinate very similar experiences independently of each other. could some of them have been hallucinating, sure, but i just can't really believe that every single account can be waved off like this.

one subset of this theory is that this was caused by the consumption of hallucinogenic drugs, but that can easily be disproved by the fact that each witness, when interrogated further, had passed drug tests– even if they had used in the past. all of these people were stone cold sober when they saw what they'd seen.

due to their extremely strange, cryptic nature, some people believe that these so-called glitch pokémon are either entirely new legendaries, or illusions caused by legendaries. for this theory, people often point to the pokémon known as hoopa, which, in its mythos, was a trickster god who had the ability to create illusions and transport objects through space through its rings. however, this doesn't really explain the time distortion reported by many of the people who encountered glitch pokémon– unless hoopa is working alongside dialga, i wouldn't really consider this to be factual. as for the theory that these glitch pokémon are actually new legendary pokémon.. yeah, i honestly just find that to be a little too much stretching of the imagination to justify that. that's all i, personally, can really say about that.

SIMULATION THEORY

oh god do i really have to talk about this? okay, so some people, including some witnesses themselves, believe that this phenomenon is proof that the entire world is a simulation inside of a supercomputer or whatever. because of how weird that shit is, they just don't think they can logically explain this in any sort of biological way. this group is also where the term "glitch pokémon" comes from, as it was extremely popular when the idea spread through cultural osmosis.

GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENTS

honestly, this take is very conspiratorial, even for me. just.. why? how would any sort of government or massive organization manage to create anything like what was described? the only known man-made pokémon that comes even close is type: null and silvally, but, even then, the two concepts are hundreds of kilometers apart. i'm just going to mark this one down as straight up impossible.

honestly, i would have liked to come out of this with a full opinion, but i really don't have one, even after my research. i want to believe that not everyone is lying about these so-called pokémon but.. it really just doesn't feel real? at the same time though, what would be the motivation behind that? i literally just do not know what to think about this, because it's just so plainly bizarre and unnatural– even for conspiracy standards.

[strawberryjamsara]

hey, sorry, same anon from earlier but i'm pretty sure it's implied most people... *did* try and get in contact with the police, as the cops said they were dealing with a crazy workload that day. mass sociogenic illness is a real, proven thing, and with a story like that (*especially* since they said the captors let them go when they asked!) who *would* believe that it actually happened?? i wouldn't!! junho was not only a detective (working with the police), but was recording evidence on his phone. he never shared it until he thought he was definitely going to die. fuck junho hwang, all cops are bastards <3

Jun Ho was a pig <3<3<3<3<3

[soph950]

If I wasn’t already committed to art history and crit career-wise I’d definitely be pursuing research in mass sociogenic illness or delusions in general. Id be girl Adorno

[theliterateape]

The Breakfast Club of Social Media

by Don Hall

TikTok scares the living shit out of me.

My niece suggested I hop on to see what she was up to so I did.

I read a list somewhere that posited that Faceborg=Boomers Twitter=GenX Instagram=Millennials TikTok=Zoomers

I was greeted with a bizarre mix of videos ranging from college women in bikinis stating "This is for the older men," grown women dancing around in bikinis, fucked up videos of a mass of ticks on some Vietnamese kid clustered like an ascot, grotesque pimple-popping videos, Marvel memes, and at least five different kids with Tourette's Syndrome explaining how people treat them badly.

"What the Bleeding Christ is THIS?"

Like all social media it was strangely addictive and suddenly I realized I'd been sitting and scrolling this random effluvia for nearly an hour. Looking up and away from my smartphone, my eyes blinking that "Where am I?" and "What day is it?" stupor associated with coming to after an especially potent spoon of heroine, I immediately deleted the app. I almost tossed my phone away like I was holding a snake.

No offense intended toward my niece but that shit was creepy.

Later that day I wondered about the content. Why was that the menu served to me? What was it the algorithm that dictated I should see what I saw? The college girls and grown women make sense: I'm an older guy on TikTok. Why else would I be there? The ticks and pimple-popping was a mystery. The MCU stuff made complete sense. 

Wait. FIVE kids with Tourette's? What are the odds of that?

I remember when I was a teenager, looking to fit in and be popular on some level. We all do. It's a normal behavior of the trouser ape to mimic those we see receiving social status. It's why the goth kids dressed in black, the preppie kids wore polos, the jocks wore their letter jackets everywhere.

When I was eleven years old my mother would cart my sister and I to church. The bribe to go was that following the dry Lutheran lecture we would head to the Rose Bowl and have a buffet breakfast. We couldn't resist.

Now, my sister and I always argued afterwards about who would sit in the shotgun seat. I knew it was coming so I would leave the restaurant pretending to be a mentally challenged kid. I'm not proud of it but, hell, I was a kid. While the impression itself was not specifically funny, the horrified looks of other diners as my mother smacked the little retarded boy on the head, yelling "Goddamnit, Donald! Stop it and get in the car!" was comic gold.

Bizarrely, there is an explanation for the burst of Tourette's Syndrome on TikTok and it has to do with two new things in our daily lives: the rise of the Grievance Industry and a brand new disorder aptly named Mass Social-Media Induced Illness.

A study published recently reported the first outbreak of “a new type of mass sociogenic illness… spread solely via social media.”

Faking illnesses is nothing new—some of those who do it have a recognized mental illness known as Munchausen’s syndrome, or ‘factitious disorder.’ Those with this complex psychological disorder feign or deliberately induce symptoms of illness in themselves.

Research began when a high number of young patients were referred to a Tourette’s clinic when traditional medical treatments like anti-psychotic drugs failed to improve their condition. When it was discovered that the patients presented symptoms identical to those of Tourette's sufferer Jan Zimmerman, a German YouTuber, the researchers realized the problem: the patients did not actually suffer from Tourette’s, but were mimicking Zimmerman’s vocalized tics that they saw on his videos. Not long after which, “a rapid and complete remission occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette's Syndrome”.

Wannarexia is a pejorative term and, says Urban Dictionary, is “an imaginary disease most commonly found amongst preteen to teenage, overweight females who claim to have the eating disorder anorexia, but they do not meet the criteria.” It continues, “In fact, they do not have an eating disorder at all. Most wannarexic people feel that anorexia is a ‘quick fix' to lose weight and that it is glamorous.”

In 2014, there was Belle Gibson, the cancer patient who survived her battle with a brain tumor after cutting out gluten and dairy. She became a popular wellness warrior with a cookbook published. She was then "diagnosed" with other cancers. Gibson finally admitted it had all been a lie.

Suicide contagion "is the exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors within one's family, one's peer group, or through media reports of suicide and can result in an increase in suicide and suicidal behaviors. Direct and indirect exposure to suicidal behavior has been shown to precede an increase in suicidal behavior in persons at risk for suicide, especially in adolescents and young adults."

It reminds me of the pilot episode of Hulu's Helstrom, where Damon, the brother with the power to exorcise demons, is called in to help a couple whose child is possessed. After dousing the kid with holy water and causing him to convulse and scream in Latin, Damon confesses it was just tap water from the bathroom and that the kid is full of shit.

The kid saw it in movies, decided that it would garner him the attention of his absent parents, smeared his feces on his wall and learned some Latin. Violá! Little fucker.

Kids are clay. I'd suggest that most of these posers are not like Belle Gibson, not grifters looking to cash in on the social capitol associated with being disabled in some manner. They've discovered a brand new way to gain popularity. Instead of dressing all in black, wearing a polo shirt, or a letter jacket, they pretend to have an ailment. To be noticed. To get the shotgun seat on TikTok.

All of this causes the question to bang around my limited cranium space: what other examples of victimhood are so easily mimicked by the popularity seeking, completely normal teenagers? Once the Tourette's and faux anorexia has been discovered, what's next?

There has been extremely limited and wholly inconclusive research done to examine the effects of social media on the explosion of teenagers claiming to be gender nonbinary or transgender so whether or not society's more open-minded approach to gender switching is allowing children to embrace these ideas or the presence of being popular is certainly in question.

Social media’s newfound ability to hyper-target specific communities has only increased the likelihood of online users to stumble across this type of information and support, increasing the likelihood of young people in feeling comfortable and safe enough to take steps to achieve gender change. The issue lies in whether or not those young people are truly responding to personal identity issues, or a greater desire to attract attention, experience excitement and fit in to a rare and unique community.

SOURCE

While no conclusive studies can clearly demonstrate the causal connection between social media and the rise of white nationalist leanings in young adults, "some experts say social media algorithms are fueling a worldwide rise in extremist views or conspiracies by creating echo-chambers online. And while it's certainly not just boys who are affected by internet propaganda, in the US at least, it seems that it is driving young men in particular to lash out most violently."

A friend of mine, the parent of four children, admitted to me once that she thought she had important influence on her children and their social development until she sent them off to school. "As soon as they were surrounded by other kids, I was there to feed them and make sure they were safe. In terms of teaching them about life, that became the sole task of the random masses of other kids. Those lessons were rarely good ones."

As those involved in the critical social justice craze have adopted the online behaviors and strategies of the alt-right, indoctrination of bullies-by-proxy is yet another pose kids are learning.

Extreme Left rhetoric provides cover for not just people’s various pathologies — anxiety, depression, OCD — but bullying as well. Middle schoolers are well-known emotional terrorists when it comes to policing their non-conforming classmates’ behavior. Most kids grow out of it, both the bullies and the bullied.

Part of the reason kids do move on is that it’s a lot easier for an adult to see that teasing a kid for being fat or being mentally challenged is shitty (unless you happen to be an unnamed former president). Now that it’s shrouded in the language of heroes, bullying is positively reinforced. 

All of this to say that, for most of us, change is scary. The kids are always going to be in the know about these changes because kids have no "good old days" to reflect upon. They have right now. The rest of us have some basis for comparison. Social media isn't wildly different than high school in the 80's—it's just faster with a ridiculously large student body to navigate.

In 1985, filmmaker John Hughes introduced the world to The Breakfast Club and put on film the stereotypes anyone familiar with the crushing existential nightmare of the American high school recognized instantly. 

The Jock The Rebel The Beauty The Nerd The Outcast

Today, thanks to the expanded high school online, we have a new group:

The Mentally Ill The Survivor The White Nationalist The Critical Social Justicer The Outcast (there’s always an outcast…)

Me? I'm pretty sure I'm the janitor now.

[themonsterguys]

Episode 054: Mass Psychogenic Illness - The Monster Guys Podcast The Monster Guys

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Episode 054: Mass Psychogenic Illness - The Monster Guys Podcast

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The Monster Guys Podcast: Episode 054 – Mass Psychogenic Illness

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Show Notes & Summary:

  Mass Psychogenic Illness, or MPI, is also known as Mass Sociogenic Illness, and is described as a rapid spread of signs and symptoms of illness among a group of people, large or small, in close proximity or relation to one another.

We’ve covered The Dancing Plague of 1518 on The Monster Guys Podcast in a previous episode, and we touch on that epidemic here again along with a laughing epidemic and other social and religious events that could be described as MPI’s.

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Credits: Music: “Can’t Kill The Beast: Theme Song for The Monster Guys Podcast” by Werewolves in Siberia – Werewolves in Siberia on Bandcamp”

Music: “In Search of the Beast: Theme Song for The Monster Guys Podcast” from the EP “In Memoriam” by Werewolves in Siberia – Werewolves in Siberia on Bandcamp”

Art: The Dancing Plague, Germany, circa 1600 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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[boxofroxxie]

I've interacted with you regarding sociogenic illness before, but I believe the timeline for endogenic systems is

Isolation

First and foremost, an alarming amount of endos I see are isolated, most likely due to mental illness. There is no issue with this stage. Someone who is experiencing social isolation should be reached out to and given help.

Maladaptive disorders

For me, when I thought I was endo, I often confused my "headmates" with my parames (AKA characters in a maladaptive daydream world). Especially for someone who's isolated, it's easy to get absorbed in these worlds and gain the ability to imagine these characters acting on their own. Again, there is no harm to anybody else in this stage, but it would be good for the person to reach out to a mental health specialist. Which leads me to my next point.

Sociogenic illness

Sociogenic illness is a phenomenon similar to the Placebo effect, in which the affected believes they are sick, mentally or physically, with no medical diagnosis proving their claims.

With access to the mental illness side of Tiktok, YouTube, Discord, even Twitter and Facebook, sociogenic illness is more common than ever.

It's in this way that "tulpamancers" believe they are creating sentience, and in this way that endos experience what they believe to be plurality. The general consensus of "plural" symptoms comes from the community that endos have built. If one were to expose a person vulnerable to developing a sociogenic illness only to the idea of Dissociative Identity Disorder, without exposing them to "tulpamancers," the endogenic/plural community, or anything else, I suspect the result would be interesting.

All in all, endogenic systems deserve to be educated properly. It is not helpful or productive to harass or threaten the wider "plural" community; doing so only pushes them further into their beliefs.

For some endogenic systems I've befriended over the years, it seems that this ideal of plurality may be a coping mechanism; for which I'd recommend pursuing IFS therapy, in which you identify conflicting parts of yourself in order to handle emotion from trauma, anxiety, or depression, as well as a hobby in creative writing.

Links:

Healthline: Maladaptive Daydreaming — Medically reviewed by Marney A. White, PhD, MS, Psychology — Written by Erica Cirino — Updated on November 30, 2021

Psychiatric Times: Tourette's or Mass Sociogenic Illness? You Decide — referenced by German studies and the Deloitte Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey

Psychology Today: Internal Family Systems Therapy, AKA IFS — referenced by The Center for Self-Leadership; Evolution of the IFS Model by Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. and approved by the staff at Psychology Today.

Idk why DID is one of the only ones where there’s genuine discourse from people on whether or not you need trauma.

Like you guys do realize the continuum is not “systems-> systems with trauma”

The real continuum is “ptsd-> CPTSD -> OSDD-> DID”

Like the pre requisite to all of them is trauma.

Why is this even an argument???