An elegantly written, compelling exploration of the way emotions and social meanings can spread like viruses from mind to mind, producing real symptoms of illness in the body. Every health professional or parent should read it to better understand how mental and even physical dysfunction can be transmitted through a screen

Kathleen Stock, author of MATERIAL GIRLS

Human distress is a universal constant, but the labels used to describe it are constantly changing as psychiatric fads and fashions come and go. The speed and reach of the internet have accelerated and widened the spread of harmful, socially contagious, psychiatric self-diagnosis. Those who do not know the weird history described in this terrific book may be doomed to repeat it. A fascinating topic that has never been more relevant.

Professor Allen Frances, Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University

In THE INFECTIOUS MIND, Matilda Gosling argues that we are living at a particularly vulnerable moment in history, as rapid social and technological changes – chief among them the rise of social media – has incubated a fresh surge of social contagions. It is a warning worth heeding, delivered with rare clarity on a topic that is often misunderstood. Gosling demonstrates a mastery of the literature as she moves across five centuries of case material … Her willingness to draw on her own experience with chronic pain gives this book an unusual candor, and her closing chapters on how we might slow or prevent these outbreaks are an important contribution to a field too often left to sensationalism

Robert Bartholomew, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland

THE INFECTIOUS MIND is a rich and compelling analysis of socially transmitted illness. Symptoms like pain and anxiety and itching and convulsions can be spread – like viruses – by the human mind. If our minds can 'infect' us, can they not also 'cure' us? Matilda Gosling is hopeful. She makes the case magnificently in this gripping investigation

Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine and author of THE MEANING OF MEMORY

The mind is no less susceptible to epidemics than the body … History is riddled with epidemics of weird mind viruses, and Matilda Gosling documents them all in this fascinating yet disquieting book

Richard Dawkins