"GW, Bali, And Mass Sociogenic Illness"

Here.

Excerpt:

Fascinatingly, such mass hysteria can spread rapidly to those who are distant from any original ‘event’; in such cases, the response is known as ‘mass hysteria by proxy’. One outbreak of ‘mass hysteria by proxy’, for example, has been documented, in which anxiety transmitted among parents led to reports of serious symptoms in students.

‘Global warming’ hysteria appears to be a classic example of ‘mass psychogenic illness’, which is triggered and fed by the regular world meetings mentioned above, but which is then transmitted globally through a 24-hour media and Green pressure groups as ‘mass hysteria by proxy’.

This is hardly surprising, as taking the temperature of the Earth every second of every day, and then reporting it uncritically and apocalyptically via 24-hour-rolling news, constitutes a perfect trigger for folk with a predisposition to hypochondria, or, in this case, to ecochondria. Manic-depression, or bipolar-disorder, then begins to exhibit itself, both in the individual and in the media.