If you can borrow it from the library or via interlibrary loan then The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness by neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan is worth reading.
Repeatedly, [O'Sullivan] is forced to explain to communities and doctors that [functional neurological disorders (aka FNDs)] are “real” – “a result of physiological mechanisms” in the brain “that go awry to produce genuine physical symptoms and disability”. As recently as 2018, an academic paper dismissed [mass psychogenic illness (aka MPI)] as a diagnosis for the diplomats in Cuba because “neurological examination and cognitive testing did not reveal any evidence of malingering”, and insurance companies are less likely to pay out for conditions that are related to “stress”. Interestingly, MPIs tend to be rejected as an explanation for symptoms in adults, especially men, but caricatured as “just” mass hysteria when they are observed in women and girls. It’s no wonder that parents of the New York girls, backed by Brockovich, campaigned long and hard to find a different explanation for their daughters’ symptoms when medicine has historically written off so much of women’s pain, illness and injury as “hysteria”. O’Sullivan’s message is that these disorders are genuine and serious and that they can be alleviated when the psychological and social causes are addressed.
More controversially, she suggests that MPIs have a purpose. “Psychosomatic and functional disorders break the rules of every other medical problem because, for all the harm they do, they are sometimes indispensable,” she writes. In Nicaragua, she asks a local: “Do you have any thoughts about why young girls are more likely to be affected by grisi siknis?” He replies: “I don’t know … but I think maybe the girls are weak and grisi siknis makes them strong.” By making social problems visible on the body, O’Sullivan believes, these conditions allow voiceless people to tell their stories and to make themselves heard.
Guardian review: www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/14/the-sleeping-beauties-by-suzanne-osullivan-review-21st-century-health-mysteries
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1529010551/?tag=mumsnetforu03-21