Investigating "mass hysteria" in early postcolonial Uganda: Benjamin H. Kagwa, East african psychiatry, and the Gisu.

In the early 1960s, medical officers and administrators began to receive reports of what was being described as "mass madness" and "mass hysteria" in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda. Each epidemic reportedly affected between three hundred and six hundred people and, coming in the wake of independence from colonial rule, caused considerable concern. One of the practitioners sent to investigate was Benjamin H. Kagwa, a Ugandan-born psychiatrist whose report represents the first investigation by an African psychiatrist in East Africa. This article uses Kagwa's investigation to explore some of the difficulties facing East Africa's first generation of psychiatrists as they took over responsibility for psychiatry. During this period, psychiatrists worked in an intellectual climate that was both attempting to deal with the legacy of colonial racism, and which placed faith in African psychiatrists to reveal more culturally sensitive insights into African psychopathology. The epidemics were the first major challenge for psychiatrists such as Kagwa precisely because they appeared to confirm what colonial psychiatrists had been warning for years-that westernization would eventually result in mass mental instability. As this article argues, however, Kagwa was never fully able to free himself from the practices and assumptions that had pervaded his discipline under colonial rule. His analysis of the epidemics as a "mental conflict" fit into a much longer tradition of psychiatry in East Africa, and stood starkly against the explanations of the local community.

[Comorbidity of hysterical pathologies associated with gynecological diseases: historical perspectives and current evidence]. / Comorbilità di patologie dello spettro isterico con patologie dell'apparato ginecologico: nozioni storiche ed evidenze attuali.

BACKGROUND: In spite of a large amount of observations made in Psychiatric Day-Hospital of Sapienza University of Rome relating to comorbidity between sexual and gynecological disorders and hysteria, we have attempted to quantify the incidence of this phenomenon in order to assess their significance. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted on medical records of patients hospitalized at the Day-Hospital of the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome between 1989 and 2009. RESULTS: It seems to be confirmed the hypothesis of a high frequency of correlating these disorders, although the results lead to a number of critical reflections on its significance and the method adopted. CONCLUSIONS: This research needs larger and more accurate future investigations, cause the type of study was made without direct information.

Epidemic hysteria in Malaysian schools: an illustrative episode.

This paper discusses the prevalence and characteristics of epidemic hysteria among predominantly rural Malay schools in Malaysia. An illustrative episode in a Malay residential girls' school is described, and contributory factors to this outbreak are elaborated. An attempt is made to analyze the complex interweaving of psychological, religious, cultural, and sociological factors in the precipitation of the outbreak.