I think it is great that more experts have offered to get involved in the LeRoy case, namely the NIH.

As you look into all of the cases of mass hysteria over the years, the diagnosis seems all of the more plausible.

Consider that:

• 520 teen girls in 2007 at a religious boarding-school in a rural area of Mexico developed subjective fever, weakness, trouble walking, and other symptoms that began soon after an expelled girl had "cursed" them.
• 58 students at an elementary school in Maryland, mostly in the 5th grade, in 2006 developed severe itching. The itching was thought to be started by dry air and low humidity in a portable classroom, but soon spread to the rest of the school over a 7 day period because of a "mass psychogenic response."
• at least 57 people at the Melbourne Airport developed symptoms in 2005 that may have been due to a mass psychogenic illness.
• 11 people in a village in West Bengal in 2003 developed a tingling sensation in their limbs, loss of control of their limbs, and extreme uneasiness after two people suddenly died.
• 48 female students in Taiwan in 2000 began having trouble breathing and swallowing, dizziness, fainting, and verbal outbursts and were diagnosed with mass hysteria.
• the vast majority of the 12,000 reports of seizures and other symptoms in Japan following a 1997 episode of Pokemon are now thought to be due to mass hysteria.
• in 1998, 122 teens in Jordan were admitted to the hospital and a total of 806 reported symptoms because of suspected side effects to a mass Td vaccination program, but were later thought to be from a mass psychogenic illness that was escalated by the way the media, the children's parents, and the medical professionals reacted to the first cases.
• 30 teen girls at a Montreal train station in 1981 developed symptoms including fainting, dizziness, headache, abdominal pain, and tingling in their extremities after seeing a 14-year-old girl faint - and were thought to have epidemic hysteria.
• in 1973, 57 members of a high school marching band in Alabama got sick during a football game, including 36 who were treated at the emergency room and it was thought that a few fainted because of the heat and the rest had symptoms because of mass hysteria.

Also consider that in many situations, experts consider that an odor can be a common trigger for mass hysteria. If there is a lot of gas drilling and fracking around the school, then there is likely some odor of gas. Add in TV coverage of the dangers of fracking, watching the movie Gasland, or a student who does a report on fracking, and maybe you have the reason for an outbreak of mass hysteria.

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Britax Child Safety, Inc. is recalling just over 14,000 of their Chaperone infant car seats because the harness adjuster can detach from the seat shell.

The Britax Chaperone is a rear-facing infant car seat with a five-point harness.

Recalled Britax Chaperone car seats were produced from Sept. 1, 2010 to April 30, 2011 and include the:

• Chaperone / E9L692J in Black/Silver
• Chaperone / E9L692K in Red
• Chaperone / E9L692L in Cowmooflage
• Chaperone / E9L692M in Green

If you have one of the recalled car seats, you will be able to get a free repair kit from Britax. They will automatically ship the repair kits to registered car seat owners no later than February 6, which is a good reason to always register your car seat and other baby products.

Stop using your car seat and call Britax if your harness adjuster clip has already detached.

Related:
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That Erin Brockovich is getting a lot of media attention for investigating the mysterious symptoms that are affecting 15 teens in a small town in western New York shouldn't be surprising. It is an interesting case.

Most of the teens have been experiencing motor and verbal tics since October without an answer that is satisfying to all of the parents.

No one likes a medical mystery (unless it has already been solved) and the area seems to have a chemical history, including a company that made rat poison and a train derailment that led to a chemical spill 41 years ago.

Could chemicals that contaminated local well water have caused the mysterious symptoms? It sounds reasonable, but why wouldn't they have caused symptoms in people who actually drank the well water before carbon treatment units were installed in 1971 and again in 1991?

Interestingly, the drinking water for Le Roy comes from the Monroe County Water Authority, which tests for, but hasn't found any trichloroethene, the industrial solvent that contaminated groundwater in the area near the train accident.

The teens were diagnosed with conversion disorder - which is typically a diagnosis of exclusion, made after you have eliminated all of the other likely possibilities. Did the doctors at the private clinic, which seems mostly geared towards treating adult patients, meet the criteria for making a diagnosis of conversion disorder?

According to ABC News, doctors have ruled out:

• PANDAS - an abbreviation for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections, a condition in which children develop worsening tics and OCD-like symptoms after strep infections
• Gardasil - many people were quick to jump on the HPV vaccine as the cause, as most the affected teens were girls, but it turns out that many of the girls did not receive the vaccine
• environmental toxins - although many people think the testing that was done was grossly inadequate

Routine tests likely also ruled out infections, drugs, and seizures, etc.

So is a diagnosis of conversion disorder or mass hysteria that far fetched? Most people will be surprised to learn that a group of 10 students at a small high school in North Carolina were diagnosed with mass hysteria (another name for conversion disorder) at the start of the 2002 school year. Twelve students, 11 girls and 1 boy, were originally evaluated after developing episodes that resembled seizures - which they were having for four months. It was determined that the boy was indeed having seizures and one of the girls was suffering from postural hypotension, which can lead to fainting. The other 10 girls were diagnosed with mass motor hysteria, which went away after the students were separated over Christmas break.

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Parents can certainly learn a lesson from some of these accidents and tragedies, such as that a mild winter equals thin ice on most ponds, which means you shouldn't go for a stroll on the ice with your family. Also, gun powder and kids aren't a good mix.

• a 6-year-old who drowned, and has still not been found, after falling into the Clackamas River in Oregon as the family was visiting the area to see the snow
• a 14-year-old in Tremonton, Utah who died when a miniature replica cannon blew up as he was examining it to figure out why it hadn't fired and shrapnel hit him in the face. Although the cannon was "just a toy," the teen would reportedly fire pieces of gun powder wrapped in tin foil from the barrel.
• a 17-year-old in Red Jacket, West Virginia who suffered life-threatening injuries and was air-lifted to a hospital after losing control of his ATV
• a 1-year-old baby who survived a second story fall through the bars of a balcony, which may have broke, in an apartment in Lake Worth, Florida
• a 3-year-old and his parents who were rescued after falling through thin ice at Spy Pond in Arlington, Massachusetts
  
• a 13-month-old twin boy who died in a house fire in Trumann, Arkansas
• a 6-year-old who has bites on his face and leg after being bitten by a Rottweiler-lab mix in Huntington, West Virginia
• a 5-year-old girl who  died after she became strangled by her jump rope on some play ground equipment at a Wichita Falls, Texas apartment complex in what is being described as a "freak accident"

You don't have to wait for an accident to think about preventing a tragedy though.

What do you or your kids do that isn't safe?

Related:
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Layers of Protection - Child Safety Tips
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