Recommended reading: NYT article on conversion disorder in Le Roy

Susan Dominus, writing for the New York Times Magazine, has produced a lengthy article looking at Mass Psychogenic Illness in Le Roy, which resulted in at least 19 people developing motion symptoms and verbal tics.

Dominus covers not only the personal history of some of the girls involved, but also the sociological and economic changes that have taken place in Le Roy in recent years.

In some detail in a couple of cases, Dominus reveals significant stresses in the lives of some of those afflicted -- stress factors that a few of the girls and their families still seem to dismiss as irrelevant.

Dominus summarized her findings:

A common thread emerged among the five girls I interviewed extensively: none had stable relationships with their biological fathers. And the father of a sixth girl had seen little of his high-school daughter until his concern about the tics galvanized their relationship. Another student was a foster child who switched foster homes shortly before his tics came on; yet another is in the custody of an older sibling. Another two have spotty contact with their fathers. One young woman I interviewed was close to homeless after she and her mother left her father’s trailer. They’re staying with a friend of a friend while her mother, who was laid off two times in the last year, tries to scrape together first and last month’s rent so they can get a place of their own.

Dominus also reveals that Dr. Rosario Trifiletti, who has diagnosed a mysterious and ill-defined "PANDAS-like illness," was unaware of the trauma in his patients' lives:

When I spoke to him in late February, Trifiletti told me that the girls he was treating were showing dramatic signs of improvement. Katie’s parents said they believed that she was responding well to the antibiotics; Chelsey’s family reported that the drugs are helping her as well. But another patient of Trifiletti’s said she was still fainting.

When the subject of the girls’ personal backgrounds came up — the biopsychosocial factors that might be affecting their health — Trifiletti said he had not had the time to ask them about those kinds of things. The abuse, the troubling family circumstances — much of it came as news to him. “Jeez, I didn’t realize the extent,” Trifiletti said. “These aren’t things people want to talk about. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. It’s hard to distinguish between the drug and the placebo effect.”

Read the whole thing.