To: 2MAR$ who wrote (26693 ) 6/4/2012 10:44:51 AM From: average joe Respond to "stumbling around shouting incoherently he is the Son of God to every passerby & have to be hospitalized" Jerusalem syndrome is a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions psychosis Jerusalem Jews Christians Muslims Anxiety, agitation, nervousness and tension, plus other unspecified reactions. Declaration of the desire to split away from the group or the family and to tour Jerusalem alone. Tourist guides aware of the Jerusalem syndrome and of the significance of such declarations may at this point refer the tourist to an institution for psychiatric evaluation in an attempt to preempt the subsequent stages of the syndrome. If unattended, these stages are usually unavoidable. A need to be clean and pure: obsession with taking baths and showers; compulsive fingernail and toenail cutting. Preparation, often with the aid of hotel bed-linen, of a long, ankle-length, toga-like gown, which is always white. The need to shout psalms or verses from the Bible, or to sing religious hymns or spirituals loudly. Manifestations of this type serve as a warning to hotel personnel and tourist guides, who should then attempt to have the tourist taken for professional treatment. Failing this, the two last stages will develop. A procession or march to one of Jerusalem's holy places, ex:The Western Wall. Delivery of a sermon in a holy place. The sermon is typically based on a plea to humankind to adopt a more wholesome, moral, simple way of life. Such sermons are typically ill-prepared and disjointed. The best known, although not the most prevalent, manifestation of the Jerusalem syndrome is the phenomenon whereby a person who seems previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology en.wikipedia.org
