“Hysteria” in LeRoy: A Skeptic’s View
I grew up in Batavia, N.Y., about ten miles down the road from the small town of LeRoy. I had just gone off to Cornell a few months before the big train derailment in December, 1970, that spilled cyanide crystals and about 30,000 gallons of the solvent called tricholoroethene onto the railroad bed.
I never imagined that 40 years later, as a psychiatrist, I’d be reading about this incident in connection with one of the most mysterious mass outbreaks of neurological symptoms in recent memory. And yet, this past January, the environmental-activist-cum-movie-star, Erin Brockovich, began investigating a possible connection between that chemical spill and the bizarre outbreak among a group of LeRoy Junior-Senior High School students.
I truly don’t know what explains the strange constellation of signs and symptoms seen in this group of young people. I’m not sure anybody does. Most of the expert opinion has settled on the description of “mass psychogenic illness.”


I recently ran across two different, new apps in development for smartphones and iPhones, both of which purport to measure a person’s mental health, happiness and even depression completely passively. (“Apps” are tiny pieces of software that run most commonly on portable devices.)
If you give people the opportunity to leverage their personal social networks online to play a game, you should probably think long and hard before you shut down that game.
I was recently approached by a frazzled woman at a train station who was on the verge of tears. With an unsteady, quavering voice and a shaky demeanor, she explained that she’d been approaching strangers for several hours, while looking to collect enough fare to purchase an Amtrak ticket. Her wallet was lost, and she needed to get home in order to avoid spending the night in Manhattan’s Penn Station (which houses a couple of tasty smoothie storefronts, but it’s not exactly an atmosphere for a good night’s sleep).
A week ago, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times by L. Alan Sroufe, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, questioning society’s reliance on medications to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He suggested that Ritalin has “gone wrong,” in that we simply rely too heavily on drugs to treat childhood disorders.
This guest article from
Why does the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) misrepresent psychological research?
I live in a college town.
Being in a close, loving relationship is many things. It’s comforting, satisfying, challenging, enlightening, and fun. The one thing that a close relationship is not, however, is simple.