Can an atheist ever feel mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness?

Question

Like in this question, I have seen only videos related to spirituality. Are there any instances where atheist people (or person) have been subject to mass hysteria? Do these experiences only happen to religious people?

Answer 1

Yes, definitely.

I had anorexia nervosa for 15 years and I would consider it as a psychogenic mass illness.

Also the atheism is a point worth to discuss, thus anorexia is known as a "religious" practice of e.g. nuns, but in our time it is more a mixture between societal pressure, genetics, and physiology (hormones, nervous system, brain, organs, emotions).

Also, eating disorders have a different character than a religious practice - fear, grief, and shame are the most predominant emotions and the "movement" is "avoidant".

I would guess a religion you are connected with might prevent anorexia nervosa actually. If you have a self-worth, self-love, and feel secure, you definitely have better chances to not get an ED.

But "alone" and with a trauma living in threatening environment not eating or trying to fit into social standards is very pathogenic.

Not eating is a good way of "escaping" unpleasant things - emotions, situations.

There is a huge pressure to have a body which fits or exceeds standards, and women really have tendencies to see each other as enemies.

Women are told that thin is more worthy than normal or obese, and caloric restriction is everywhere. Starved brains are acting similiarly when special conditions occur - here first and foremost trauma and sensitivity to ghrelins activity. Starvation changes the psyche. It makes you feel less pain.

So women get told to eat less and less and ghrelin works like a drug. Hunger is changing the brain. Starving brains have problems in making logical decisions and often create OCD around how to stay thin, lose more weight, and everything in the brain is filled with how to not eat.

Beyond is often trauma which needs to be seen and integrated.

I was also forced and later voluntarily in eating disorder hospitals in Germany. These stations are full of (mostly) women with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating - mostly comorbid with anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, OCD... The thought patterns and behaviors and fears of the members are often the same such as the way people try to keep the illness running.

In clinics there is a very special psychodynamic which often leads to even more restrictive and self-harming behaviors because of the "need to eat even less and do even more to lose weight".

It's a house of similar-looking, starving women and everyone tries to eat less than her neighbour. It's really similiar to a mass hysteria.

And those thought patterns are definitely settled in society in more or less pathogenic ways.