Mass dissociative disorder in Janaozen: predictors and mechanisms of development
The article analyses the causes and mechanisms of development of mass dissociative disorders registered between February and April 2015 in Janaozen, Kazakhstan. Twenty teenage girls with convulsions of unknown etiology were admitted to a municipal hospital and diagnosed with “a postvaccinal reaction”. This caused panic rumours among the population, which led to an increase in the number of those who turned susceptible to the symptoms by more than ten times. The authors of the article describe the interaction of various factors that influenced the outbreak of “mental epidemic”, particularly the peculiarities of cognitive schemes and anticipation, as well as the specific character of the traumatic stress experienced by the residents of the town between 2011 and 2015. The most vulnerable group of people was determined, that is girls and young women with a certain constitutional predisposition. The mass vaccination of teenagers without explaining and obtaining informed consent was regarded as an act of violence committed without the conscious participation of a vaccinated individual. Depriving of a choice and control over the committed acts became the last straw that led to the emergence of the first dissociative convulsions in the girls. The other mechanisms for the epidemic spreading include: the proliferation of panic rumours of the vaccine, emotional contagion from those teenagers who are already affected, the emergence of the disorder in those residents who were not vaccinated. The article traces the connection between the mental disorders of 2015 and the consequences of the psychologic traumatic experiences of 2011. The article marks out the phenomenon of relative personal deprivation, which contributed to the growth of the inferiority feeling among the town residents, and which is defined as one of the most powerful internal stressors. Relying on the contemporary data of neurosciences, the article shows that excessively powerful distress is able to suppress the passage of ascending sensory and motor information along the thalamocortical tract and cause the deficit of control over sensory and motor functions. The article draws similarities between the epidemic in question and the dissociative disorder epidemic in the Shelkovsk region of the Chechen Republic in 2005. It describes the specific ways of giving aid to sufferers from this condition.