ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Anyone remotely familiar with studies of mass hysteria would have known immediately that Havana syndrome had nothing to do with malevolent foreign actors. For instance, Robert Bartholomew, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Auckland, concluded last year that Havana syndrome was likely 'an outbreak of mass psychogenic illness that was exacerbated by government incompetence'.

Mass psychogenic illness occurs when people in a group start feeling sick at the same time, even though there is no physical or environmental reason for them to be sick. In the case of Havana syndrome, symptom-sharing by anxious bureaucrats and intelligence operatives must have played an important role in encouraging diplomats to feel ill. The readiness of sections of the State Department to point the finger of blame at foreign agents helped provide this otherwise inexplicable syndrome with meaning.

As Bartholomew put it: 'I would go so far as to rename it Havana syndrome delusion - the absurd belief, in the wake of persistent evidence to the contrary, that diplomats are being targeted with an energy weapon.'

No doubt State Department groupthink led to too many taking Havana syndrome seriously. But there is also another reason why mass hysteria was able to permeate Washington's foreign-policy establishment - namely, the extent to which American society in general, and its elites in particular, lead an intensely medicalised existence. That is to say, they increasingly experience everyday challenges as medical problems. This means they were all too willing to see Havana syndrome as a genuine medical condition rather than the psychogenic illness it almost certainly is.

Tweet   @brothersjudd