Laughing is not always healthy. Meet 3 cases where pathological laughter appears in real life

They say that laughter is one of the best medicine for the soul, but this is not always true. In some cases, the person may have gone through such a crisis that they start to suffer from pathological laughter, which can cause a series of inconveniences when living with other people.

O awesome.club researched a little more about this pathology and analyzed some real cases of people who faced this problem and found alternatives to live in harmony with their emotions.

A lot of research has been done on laughter. Some neurobiology researchers, such as Robert Provine, claim that laughter is an instinctive, contagious, stereotyped act that we perform involuntarily. Others, like Charles R. Gruner, claim that laughter is a sign of triumph over an opponent.

And where does pathological laughter come in? In the field of psychiatry, there is laughter for no reason, which arises after an illness such as bulbar palsy, or in cases of intoxication by alcohol or hallucinogens. It usually manifests in patients with schizophrenia as a response to auditory hallucinations, or in patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.

According to a study, any type of stimulation can lead to a disproportion called emotional incontinence. In some cases, the patient goes from laughing to crying immediately and may even experience a phase of amnesia after the laughing fit has ended.

Normal laughter can arise from a wide variety of stimuli, whereas pathological laughter appears inappropriately and unrestrained.

The main symptom is uncontrolled laughter at any time, whether due to conditions in the brain or problems in the central nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis. This phenomenon also affects children with Asperger’s syndrome and autism.

On many occasions, uncontrolled laughter can cause certain inconveniences. Although this all sounds like a sci-fi movie script, many people have suffered or suffer from these problems on a daily basis. Let’s look at some real-life cases that were researched and ended up being documented.

The most famous case of pathological laughter is that of Paul Pugh. At the age of 27 he was robbed in the street, was hit many times on the head and was in a coma for 2 months. When he woke up, therapists and family members noticed the first signs of uncontrolled laughter. As they talked about his condition, Paul couldn’t control his laughter, although he stated that he wanted to cry for everything he was suffering.

According to clinical neuropsychologist Andy Tyerman, Paul Pugh suffers from pseudobulbar palsy, characterized by the manifestation of emotions that are inappropriate for the context – there is a contradiction between what the patient feels and how these feelings are manifested. That’s why he emphasizes the importance of controlling emotions, especially so that relationships are not affected too much.

This problem made Paul face many conflicts with friends and family who were unaware of his status. After 10 years of suffering and a lot of effort, he managed to control the urge to laugh on some occasions. He started to think about bad situations or how the person in front of him didn’t provoke any feelings. These days, he lectures at academic institutions on the problems that alcohol can cause, so that no one has to face the same situations he does.

In the 1960s, in a village in Tanganyika (currently known as Tanzania), the “Laughter Epidemic” emerged, started by a group of girls at a school. This phenomenon began to expand to other classes and after the school closed it reached other locations. However, just as it appeared, the phenomenon disappeared 4 months later. Some testimonies guarantee that the laughter took place at intervals of time, such as occasional bursts of laughter that ended between 6 and 12 months after the start.

It is said that the epidemic arose from a mass hysteria caused by a social change. For linguistic researcher Christian F. Hempelmann, this case may be related to the independence of Tanganyika in 1962, which made many young people feel stressed due to the high expectations that parents and teachers had of them. This is what brought about a Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI); according to Hempelmann, it does not arise from an environmental cause or from intoxication, it is a stress shared by a certain population.

According to another hypothesis, put forward by the sociologist Robert Bartholomew and the psychiatrist Simon Wessely, the laughter epidemic particularly affected the missionary schools. At that time, Tanganyika was ruled by old and traditional people who kept very strict laws. In this sense, the laughter was caused by a cultural dissonance between traditional conservatism and new ideas that challenged the beliefs already established in society. The researchers called this process “conversion reactions.”

This disease can also affect other aspects of the body’s functioning. The case of Jordi Évole, a Spanish television presenter and journalist, is a good example. It all started in an interview he did with football player Andrés Iniesta, in Japan, in which the journalist had a fit of laughter. The attack caused him to fall to the ground after weakening his muscles and a complete loss of balance.

Neurologist Celia García Malo concluded that Jordi Évole has a weakness in the muscles of the face and neck that extends to the extremities. Celia has treated other cases where negative emotions have been expressed. Jordi is one of more than 20,000 Spaniards who suffer from cataplexy, a sudden muscular atony that causes a person to fall.

According to the Clinic of the University of Navarra (CUN), cataplexy is a disease that causes the selective loss of neurons due to insomnia and lack of sleep. All this leads to a sudden onset of paradoxical sleep, a kind of paralysis. That is, a direct consequence of narcolepsy generated by emotional situations such as uncontrolled laughter. Even so, this did not stop Jordi Évole from continuing to exercise his profession as a journalist.

Know someone who suffers from pathological laughter? How do you think she can be treated? Share in the comments.