Dealing the occasional episodes of mass hysteria in India

Dear Editor,

The editorial titled ‘Communicability of symptoms in psychiatry’ by Ventriglio and Bhugra (2017) is interesting and timely since it addresses one of the least explored topics in psychiatry. The context is relevant for India, which has a population of 1.3 billion and 7.5% of them suffer from some form of mental health problems that include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety (Iyer, 2017). To complicate the issue, cases of mass hysteria occur occasionally creating widespread panic in society.

Two recent cases, for example, are associated with religion. Cow slaughter is a taboo in India since cows are revered in Hinduism (Agoramoorthy & Hsu, 2012). In 2015, a Muslim farm worker in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, was beaten to death by a mob after rumors emerged that the family slaughtered a cow. In Gujarat, cow slaughter is punishable by life imprisonment. Similarly, violence erupted in Bhadrak, Odisha, in April 2017 after a social media post demeaned the Hindu God, Rama (Gupta, 2017). The government declared curfew and deployed armed police to contain the violence.

Debt-ridden farmers are known to commit mass suicide in Maharashtra (Agoramoorthy & Hsu, 2017). Although the Hindu religion prohibits suicide, the painful form of self-immolation has increasingly becoming an attention-seeking psychotic disorder. As the editorial points out, many kill themselves after death of their leaders, a recent case, for example, involves J. Jayalalithaa, who was a former movie actress, politician and chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Due to prolonged illness, she passed away in hospital on 5 December 2016. Subsequently, 597 people died of shock and suicide and her party announced that each family would receive US$4,600 as compensation for the loss of loved ones (Dutta, 2016).

What causes the mass suicidal hysteria? Is there an emotional-bond between leaders and followers? Do cash incentives propel people toward mass suicide? Data are unfortunately lacking on the psychological root-cause of this bizarre mass suicide spectacle. It is therefore crucial for the government to set up a high-level committee comprising social psychologists to explore the proximate and ultimate causes triggering the mass hysteria–associated suicides across the country.

India currently spends <2% of its gross domestic product for healthcare and only a small amount trickles down to mental health. To make matters worse, the country has only three psychiatrists per 1 million people, while the global standard mandates six per 100,000 (Agoramoorthy, Shah, & Patel, 2014). It is therefore urgent for the government to allocate more funds to tackle the looming mental health problems facing millions of people before it’s too late.