BANGKOK – Following months-long protests on the streets of the nation’s capital, physicians are now reporting that a shockingly high percentage of city’s residents are experiencing serious medical problems directly related to the sustained endurance of Thai political theater.
In a new paper published in this month’s Journal of Asian Medicine, doctors and researchers at Bangkok General Hospital claim that up to 25% of people in Bangkok are now suffering from “Post-Traumatic Whistle Disorder,” a condition characterized by extreme and irrational reactions to the sounds of a common whistle.
According to Dr Watsadu Srithapong, a lead researcher on the project, Post-Traumatic Whistle Disorder affects people all across the political spectrum, albeit with variations in symptoms.
“PTWD victims are unable to control themselves when they hear a whistle, like Pavlov’s dog,” he explained. “For PDRC supporters, the sound of a whistle draws them like a moth to a flame, because they’re suddenly anxious that they are missing out on an important moment in the anti-government protests. For those who don’t support the PDRC, the sound of a whistle repulses them, and consumes them with a sense of panic that the street they are on is about to get shut down and they’ll be trapped.”
Early cases of PTWD were recorded in October of last year, when the daily whistle-blowing campaigns on Silom road began.
“We started treating people, mostly office workers, for headaches and insomnia,” said Dr Piyachan Boothawat, a neurologist. “Also a lot of protesters came in for hearing loss, which was expected. But then we started seeing a lot of people who were exhibiting psychiatric symptoms, and many of them were downright disturbing.”
According to Dr Piyachan, patients were complaining about nightmares in which a whistling sound never stopped, or where people blowing whistles would show up in unexpected places like a closet or shower.
The research breakthrough came when one psychologist tried blowing a whistle in front of a male in-patient who had been complaining about insomnia.
“The patient immediately became agitated and started screaming ‘they’re coming!’ over and over again,” she recalled. “Then he insisted on getting dressed, while checking the Google traffic map on his iPhone, saying over and over again that he had to get out of the hospital before the traffic was blocked. He was checked-in for an overnight stay in the sleep research lab, so it was nonsensical.”
Further research on whistle-sound reactions revealed numerous dissociative and paranoid reactions, including one young woman who immediately started checking Twitter and Facebook to see if there was a scheduled protest nearby and if any of her friends were going.
“When we told her there was no protest, and that the whistle was just from inside the room, she accused us of lying and said we were being paid by Thaksin to stop her from protecting the king,” Dr Piyachan said. “We had to restrain her and give her a sedative.” Realizing that they had a full-blown health crisis on their hands, the doctors contacted other hospitals near the protest sites and received similar stories. By collecting all their data on the related cases, they were able to form a picture of a new and serious medical condition.
“Post-Traumatic Whistle Disorder can have serious consequences if untreated,” explained Dr Watasadu. “We’ve seen cases where people who work near traffic police have nearly lost their sanity. Football players have assaulted referees for no reason. Families are being torn apart, and workplaces are coming to a halt.”
The physicians are recommending immediate medical examination for any persons exhibiting the following symptoms: hearing phantom whistles or dreaming about whistle sounds; responding irrationally to the sound of whistles with either attraction or repulsion; anxiety, insomnia, or irritability caused by the sight of a whistle; abnormal feelings of hatred or comraderie with strangers wearing whistles.
“We want to stress that PTWD is a medical problem, not a personality disorder,” Dr Watsadu said. “With some basic therapy, we can cure this completely. But only if people come in for the help they need.”
Additionally, the doctors warn that they are currently discovering numerous other medical problems that are the direct result of the prolonged protests.
“We’re getting a lot of patients with what we call Flag Wrist Lock, which is an arthritic condition caused by waving a flag for too long,” said Dr Piyachan. “Also, the psychiatric ward is reporting a lot of Nationalist Style Deficiency, where victims seem to have lost their ability to put together matching clothes, due to prolonged exposure to ugly red, blue, and white striped accessories.”
Worse, the hospital has registered an unprecedented 24 cases of Megaphone Mouth, a severe mental dysfunction wherein a person thinks he or she needs to shout a stream of unsubstantiated opinions at maximum volume, 24 hours a day.
Despite her insistence that all these conditions were fully treatable, Dr Piyachan said that the only long-term cure for these and other related problems was to cure them at the source.
“So long as Thai people choose to express their ideas in such simplistic and meaningless ways, we’re going to see negative effects,” she said. “Blowing a whistle louder just causes more deafness. And self-inflicted deafness is, without question, Thailand’s biggest problem.”
