Culture shock to the extreme
Culture shock is always something to think about when taking a meeting overseas, but this is pretty extreme: Paris Syndrome. According to the article, some Japanese tourists find the reality of Paris so far removed from their expectations that it actually can cause psychosis:
- Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.
If you have any fragile folks in your group, I guess you better be careful in how you market your destination, be it Paris or Pittsburgh.
(Thanks to the MeCo listserv for the pointer.)
Related Topics: Strange but true, Travel
October 25th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Speaking for Pittsburgh, I imagine it doubtful that visitors will experience psychotic episodes once they learn there’s no smoke in the air and no blast furnaces lighting up the night sky.
Then again, they might be appalled that Pittsburgh’s macho image is fueled by Coors Light, not Iron City.
That last point is shameful.
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