Review: Hysterical

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, there are two definitions of hysteria. 

1 : a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychogenic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral  functions

2 : behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess political hysteria

I am happy to see that the first definition is the clinical one. However, the second definition is certainly the more lay-person outline for the word. Hysteria or to be hysterical conjures up images of long white hallways, breakdowns, and times of history I would say we aren’t particularly proud of as humans. 

Hysterical is a podcast that is looking to break this word from its understanding. If you want to take a moment to mention the production, it’s great. The music is supportive without being distracting, everything was pretty well leveled. The overall production here wasn’t what impressed me, because it was not the point of the podcast. It was the journey the host brought us on, to tackle the word “hysterical”. Maybe not intentionally, but through the story of what happened to these young girls in LeRoy, New York we have the chance to zoom in and out. We have a chance to look at how we use our words, how we interpret the use of words and more.

 What is hysteria? What is this word, and what does it mean when it, possibly, happens to us? 

In 2011, a group of mostly female students suddenly started coming down with tics and tremors akin to Tourette’s. One sufferer laid down from a nap, and upon waking up a short time later, found herself afflicted. It was an on, or off situation. The mystery sowed fear in the community and beyond. Parents from rivaling school districts wouldn’t let their students compete at LeRoy or against LeRoy. Questions of environmental safety brought in the team of Erin Brockovitch. A quiet, and not surprising spoiler, is that even 13 years later, no one has a real answer as to why these teenagers, and one random adult in town, came down with what many referred to as conversion disorder. 

The thing about conversion disorder, if you do not know, is that it's a psychological condition that is a quiet catch-all for the symptoms presented. Tics, tremors, lethargy, and completely normal neurological testing turned into a shrug and “oh it has to be…”. 

In seven parts, host Dan Taberski, looks at this small Western New York* town and beyond, examining not only the story of what happened in LeRoy, but where the diagnosis of conversion disorder came from, and where we might also find other cases of mass psychogenic illness - essentially mass hysteria. 

When we see it as a group of teenage girls, it is terrifying because it is our children, but it is dismissed as a teenage drama. Many of the sufferers of this mystery illness were told they were faking it for attention. Despite the community response, so many people were either dismissive or downright wrong about what was happening. It’s easy to dismiss any instance of anything that happens around teenagers as “well that’s just teenagers”. But what happens when we use the word hysterical, or hysteria, and assign it to other groups of people? 

What I love about this podcast is that it uses what happened in LeRoy as a use case of what we think we should do, but maybe what we shouldn’t do. Especially considering that LeRoy’s case focuses on teenage girls. However, is this the only recent example of mass hysteria? Are other things we’ve seen or heard of in recent years examples of hysteria. Are they examples of a mental condition that we don’t entirely know what to do with? 

What happens when something like this doesn’t revolve around teenage girls? What happens when one crucial piece of information, factual or not, gets lodged into the consciousness of a whole segment of the population? Is it hysteria because the same, visually triggered bouts of illness are happening to adult men? Especially from segments of the population like government intelligence and law enforcement? 

This podcast tackles a simple idea, and absolutely turns it on its head. Seven forty-ish minute episodes set us on a train that we think we know the end destination of. We don’t, and that’s what makes it so much more interesting. The case that happened in LeRoy is absolutely a lure, a mystery to tantalize, but eventually inverts itself into a greater cultural examination of words, mental conditions, and more. 

Listen to Hysterical below!

Hysterical was produced by Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios

*This happened not too far away from where I grew up, and I stand by the idea of, whenever possible, segmenting NYS into more appropriate regions than “Upstate” and “New York City/Long Island”. Why? Specifics matter. If someone had told me Western New York sooner I would have listened to this podcast a lot faster. “Upstate” is not specific enough. Plus, the voice of a childhood newscaster seemingly randomly being in the first five minutes of a new podcast was the most comfortable trigger I’ve ever experienced? The sensation was that of a trigger, but it wasn’t bad. Just intense? Either way. Go Bills.