IN DECEMBER 2005 pupils and teachers at a school in the Shelkovsk region of Chechnya reported that they were suffering respiratory difficulties, seizures and fainting. The symptoms, which quickly spread to schools in surrounding villages, did not respond to medical treatment. Eventually close to 100 people were affected, mainly adolescent girls.
The Chechens, traumatised by more than a decade of Russian counter-terrorist operations, suspected poisoning by the Russians. When the Russian authorities diagnosed mass hysteria, people dismissed this as just more official duplicity. However, one Chechen psychologist, Khapta Akhmedova, was aware of the sizeable literature on mass hysteria and thought…
