Iranian schoolgirls mass poisoning reports
Robert Bartholomew suggested that the people affected may have been suffering from "mass psychogenic illness". (also called mass hysteria). There were similar cases in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2016. There was the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic. In all of these cases young Islamic girls fell ill from a mystery condition that was attributed to poison gas after someone drew attention to an unusual odor. In the Afghanistan case, other studies have also concluded that the affected girls, who were attending schools in defiance of the Taliban, were suffering from mass psychogenic illness.