In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a conta­gion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises during the night. These are only a few of the many sus­pected culture-bound psychosomatic syndromes—specific sets of symptoms that exist in a particular culture or environment—that affect people throughout the world.
 
In The Sleeping Beauties, Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan—an award-winning Irish neurologist—investigates psychosomatic disorders, traveling the world to visit communi­ties suffering from these so-called mystery illnesses. From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua to the heart of the María Mountains in Colombia, O’Sullivan records the remark­able stories of syndromes related to her by people from all walks of life. Riveting and often distressing, these case studies are recounted with compassion and humanity.
 
In examining the complexity of psychogenic illness, O’Sullivan has written a book of both fascination and se­rious concern as these syndromes continue to proliferate around the globe.

SUZANNE O’SULLIVAN is an Irish neurologist working in Britain. Her first book, Is It All in Your Head?: True Stories of Imaginary Illness, won the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology General Book Prize. She lives in London.

Preface: The Mystery Illness 1

1. The Sleeping Beauties 13

2. Crazy 40

3.Paradise Lost 80

4. Mind over Matter 128

5. Horses Not Zebras 157

6. A Question of Trust 189

7. The Witches of Le Roy 237

8. Normal Behaviour 273

Epilogue 319

Acknowledgements 327