Reported aspects of the syndrome include uncontrollable screaming or shouting, crying, trembling, sensations of heat rising in the chest and head, dissociative experiences, and verbal or physical aggression. The reaction is usually associated with a stressful event relating to the family, although it is not specifically defined as arising from such occurrences.

Despite comparisons to panic attack, investigators have identified ataque de nervios as a separate syndrome with measured differences in anxiety sensitivity and types of attacks.

In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome, or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or culture. There are no objective biochemical or structural alterations of body organs or functions, and the disease is not recognized in other cultures. The term "culture-bound syndrome" was included in the fourth version of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) which also includes a list of the most common culture-bound conditions (DSM-IV: Appendix I). Counterpart within the framework of ICD-10 () are the "culture-specific disorders" defined in Annex 2 of the "Diagnostic criteria for research".

More broadly, an epidemic that can be attributed to cultural behavior patterns or suggestion is sometimes referred to as a behavioral epidemic. As in the cases of drug or alcohol abuse or smoking, transmission can be determined by communal reinforcement as well as by person-to-person interactions. On etiological grounds, it can be difficult to distinguish the causal contribution of culture in disease from other environmental factors such as toxicity.

Paris syndrome (, , "Pari shōkōgun") is a transient mental disorder exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock derived from their discovery that Paris is not what they had expected it to be. The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others, such as vomiting. Similar syndromes include Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of culture shock. It is particularly noted among Japanese travelers.

Symptoms most frequently reported include a persistent sensation of motion usually described as rocking, swaying, or bobbing, disequilibrium with difficulty maintaining balance; it is seldom accompanied by a true spinning vertigo. Chronically fatigued, sufferers can become fatigued quickly with minimal exertion and experience neck and back pain. Other common symptoms include difficulty concentrating or inability to multitask, visual intolerance of busy patterns, headaches and/or migraine headaches, and ear pain or fullness.

Fluctuations in weather, in particular barometric pressure, also affect suffers. Many have photo-sensitivity and find it more difficult to walk in the dark as well as other sensitivities to strong smells including chemical smells. Cognitive impairment ("brain fog") includes an inability to recall words, short term memory loss, an inability to multi-task, misspelling and mispronunciation of words. MdDS sufferers report they are unable to use a computer for any length of time due to the visual overstimulation, and some are even unable to watch television.

The condition may be masked by a return to motion such as in a car, train, plane, or boat; however, once the motion ceases, the symptoms rebound or return, often at much higher levels than when the journey first commenced. Symptoms can be increased by stress, lack of sleep, crowds, flickering lights, loud sounds, fast or sudden movements, enclosed areas or busy patterns.

MdDS sufferers can sleep up to 12 or more hours a day, depending on their symptom levels. Research reveals MdDS is not migraine related and many sufferers have never had migraine symptoms prior to the onset of the disorder. However, for some MdDS sufferers there maybe have been a correlation between migraine and some pathophysiological overlap or even some other precipitating illness.

The symptoms of MdDS may be extremely debilitating and fluctuate high and low on a daily basis; it greatly affects the working capacity of sufferers with many having to relinquish work; it also limits most other daily and social activities. Sufferers can have low quality of life in both the physical and emotional realms, comparable to people who have multiple sclerosis.

A culture-specific syndrome is characterized by:

1. categorization as a disease in the culture (i.e., not a voluntary behaviour or false claim);

2. widespread familiarity in the culture;

3. complete lack of familiarity or misunderstanding of the condition to people in other cultures;

4. no objectively demonstrable biochemical or tissue abnormalities (signs);

5. the condition is usually recognized and treated by the folk medicine of the culture.

Some culture-specific syndromes involve somatic symptoms (pain or disturbed function of a body part), while others are purely behavioral. Some culture-bound syndromes appear with similar features in several cultures, but with locally specific traits, such as penis panics.

A culture-specific syndrome is not the same as a geographically localized disease with specific, identifiable, causal tissue abnormalities, such as kuru or sleeping sickness, or genetic conditions limited to certain populations. It is possible that a condition originally assumed to be a culture-bound behavioral syndrome is found to have a biological cause; from a medical perspective it would then be redefined into another nosological category.

In persistent MdDS, the symptoms continue for more than a month, possibly years or indefinitely. The longer the disorder remains, there is a progressively lower likelihood of remission. All medical treatment is palliative for sufferers with persistent MdDS symptoms.

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine syndrome must be distinguished from other conditions involving the startle reflex or tics.

Tourette syndrome is characterized by multiple physical (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic. There are many overlaps when compared clinically, but the abnormal "jumping" response is always provoked, unlike the involuntary tics in Tourette syndrome.

Latah from Southeast Asia is a disorder where one's startle response is similar to a state of trance with repetitive speech or movements. Miryachit is a disorder found in Siberia that also displays an action similar to "jumping". Neurasthenia is a disorder with a startle response during periods of great fatigue.

Hyperekplexia is an extremely rare autosomal dominant neurological disease. The symptoms start in infancy with hypertonia, an abnormal muscle tension that decreases flexibility, and an exaggerated startle in all ages of life.

George Miller Beard recorded individuals who would obey any command given suddenly, even if it meant striking a loved one; the Jumping Frenchmen seemed to react abnormally to sudden stimuli. The more common and less intense symptoms consisted of jumping, yelling, and hitting. These individuals exhibited outrageous bursts, and many described themselves as ticklish and shy. Other cases involved echolalia (repeating vocalizations made by another person) and echopraxia (repeating movements made by another person). Beard noted that the men were "suggestible" and that they "could not help repeating the word or sounds that came from the person that ordered them any more than they could help striking, dropping, throwing, jumping, or starting".

Egomania is also known as an obsessive preoccupation with one's self and applies to someone who follows their own ungoverned impulses and is possessed by delusions of personal greatness and feels a lack of appreciation. Someone suffering from this extreme egocentric focus is an egomaniac. The condition is psychologically abnormal.

The term "egomania" is often used by laypersons in a pejorative fashion to describe an individual who is intolerably self-centred. The clinical condition that most resembles the popular conception of egomania is narcissistic personality disorder.

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is credited as the first person to diagnose the condition in 1986. However, later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, physician with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris syndrome is "a manifestation of psychopathology related to the voyage, rather than a syndrome of the traveller." He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in hallucinations in the manner similar to the Stendhal syndrome described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini in her book "La sindrome di Stendhal".

Victor Khrisanfovich Kandinsky () (1849, Byankino, Siberia - 1889) was a Russian physician, and was 2nd cousin to famed artist Wassily Kandinsky. He was born in Siberia into a large family of extremely wealthy businessmen.

In 1877 as a military physician in the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War, he began experiencing mood swings and hallucinations. Kandinsky performed self-diagnosis, and he referred to his mental condition as "Primäre Verrücktheit" (primary paranoid psychosis) which has been anachronistically translated into modern terms as a "schizophrenic-like state". In 1885 Kandinsky published a book written in German on "pseudohallucinations" in which he describes and details hallucinations largely based on his personal experiences. In September 1889, feeling that his psychotic symptoms were returning, he took his own life by taking an overdose of morphine. He died as a patient in the institution he had formerly run as the medical superintendent, the St. Nicholas Asylum in St. Petersburg.

In a monograph published posthumously in 1890, Kandinsky described a condition which involved being alienated from one's personal mental processes, combined with delusions of being physically and mentally influenced by external forces. The syndrome he described is now known as Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome, named along with French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. The syndrome also known as "syndrome of psychic automatism".

“Mongrel complex" ("Complexo de vira-Lata" in Portuguese) is an expression used to refer to a collective inferiority complex felt by some Brazilian people in comparison to Europe or the United States. The reference to a "mongrel" (as opposed to "pure-bred") carries negative connotations attributed to most Brazilians being racially mixed as well as a perception of lacking cultural refinement.

Erotomania is a type of delusional disorder where the affected person believes that another person is in love with him or her. This belief is usually applied to someone with higher status or a famous person, but can also be applied to a complete stranger. Erotomanic delusions often occur in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, but can also occur during a manic episode in the context of bipolar I disorder. During an erotomanic delusion, the patient believes that a secret admirer is declaring his or her affection for the patient, often by special glances, signals, telepathy, or messages through the media. Usually the patient then returns the perceived affection by means of letters, phone calls, gifts, and visits to the unwitting recipient. Even though these advances are unexpected and often unwanted, any denial of affection by the object of this delusional love is dismissed by the patient as a ploy to conceal the forbidden love from the rest of the world.

Erotomania is also called de Clérambault's syndrome, after French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), who published a comprehensive review paper on the subject ("Les Psychoses Passionnelles") in 1921. Erotomania should not be confused with obsessive love or obsession with unrequited love, neither of which involves delusion.

Following are the features and characteristics that help in spotting this disorder:

- Low birth weight (usually under 5 pounds/2.5 kilograms)

- Delayed growth and small stature

- Developmental delay

- Limb differences (missing limbs or portions of limbs)

- Small head size (microcephaly)

- Thick eyebrows, which typically meet at midline (synophrys)

- Long eyelashes

- Short upturned nose and thin downturned lips

- Long philtrum

- Excessive body hair

- Small hands and feet

- Small widely spaced teeth

- Low-set ears

- Hearing impairments

- Vision abnormalities (e.g., ptosis, nystagmus, high myopia, hypertropia)

- Partial joining of the second and third toes

- Incurved 5th fingers (clinodactyly)

- Gastroesophageal reflux

- Seizures

- Heart defects (e.g., pulmonary stenosis, VSD, ASD, coarctation of the aorta)

- Cleft palate

- Feeding problems

- Hypoplastic genitalia

Children with this syndrome are often found to have long eyelashes, bushy eyebrows and synophrys (joined eyebrows). Body hair can be excessive and affected individuals are often shorter than their immediate family members. They present a characteristic facial phenotype and is recognizable with the Facial Dysmorphology Novel Analysis (FDNA) technology

CdLS can give rise to its own array of complexities. Children with CdLS often suffer from gastrointestinal tract difficulties, particularly gastroesophageal reflux. Vomiting, intermittent poor appetite, constipation, diarrhea or gaseous distention are known to be a regularity in cases where the GI tract problems are acute. Symptoms may range from mild to severe.

CdLS may include behavior problems, including self-stimulation, aggression, self-injury or strong preference to a structured routine. Many children with CdLS exhibit autistic-like behaviors.

Behavior problems in CdLS are not inevitable. Many behavior issues associated with CdLS are reactive (i.e., something happens within the person's body or environment to bring on the behavior) and cyclical (comes and goes). Often, an underlying medical issue causes a change in behavior. Once the medical issue is treated, the behavior diminishes.

The features of this syndrome affect the face, skin, brain and the body.

Face:

- downslanting palpebral fissures

- pointed chin

- prominent forehead

- proptosis

- thin upper lip

- wide nasal bridge

Skin:

- fragile

- hyperelastic

Brain:

- Low IQ

- Periventricular white matter lesions

Body:

The height, lower-segment, hand, and foot length are all greater than usual.

The core symptom of the disorder is that the sufferer holds an unshakable belief that another person is secretly in love with them. In some cases, the sufferer may believe several people at once are "secret admirers". The sufferer may also experience other types of delusions concurrently with erotomania, such as delusions of reference, wherein the perceived admirer secretly communicates his or her love by subtle methods such as body posture, arrangement of household objects, and other seemingly innocuous acts (or, if the person is a public figure, through clues in the media). Erotomanic delusions are typically found as the primary symptom of a delusional disorder or in the context of schizophrenia and may be treated with atypical antipsychotics.

The most common symptoms of Nicolaides–Baraitser syndrome are mild to severe developmental delays with absent or limited speech, seizures, short stature, sparse hair, typical facial characteristics, brachydactyly, and prominent finger joints and broad distal phalanges.

Gueules cassées (broken faces) is a French expression for facially disfigured servicemen which originated in World War I. Colonel Yves Picot is said to have coined the term when he was refused passing a checkpoint to a party.

The syndrome is a rare clinical disorder.

- Physical

- Overgrowth

- Accelerated skeletal maturation

- Dysmorphic facial features

- Prominent eyes

- Bluish sclerae

- Coarse eyebrows

- Upturned nose

- Radiologic examination

- Accelerated osseous maturation

- Phalangeal abnormalities

- Tubular thinning of the long bones

- Skull abnormalities

- Mental

- Often associated with intellectual disability (of variable degree)

The word neuroleptic originates from the Greek word lepsis ("seizure" or "fit"). Antipsychotics ( neuroleptics or tranquilizers) were investigated by the anesthesiologists De Castro and Mundeleer who coined the term neuroleptanalgesia, an anesthetic process that involves combining a major neuroleptic tranquilizer/antipsychotic with a potent opioid analgesic to produce a detached, pain-free state. This technique was widely used from the 1960s onwards, initially using a combination of phenoperidine and haloperidol, which was subsequently replaced in the early 1980s by a combination of fentanyl and droperidol. Efforts were also made to develop compounds which combined both types of activity in a single molecule. Neuroleptanalgesia results in amnesia among some, but not all, patients. The technique has become less popular with the advent of more modern procedural sedation drug combinations, though it is still rarely used today.

Intermetamorphosis is a delusional misidentification syndrome, related to agnosia. The main symptoms consist of patients believing that they can see others change into someone else in both external appearance and internal personality. The disorder is usually comorbid with neurological disorders or mental disorders.

An example from medical literature is a man who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. After some time he mistook his wife for his deceased mother and later for his sister. As an explanation, he stated that he had never been married or that his wife had left him. Later he mistook his son for his brother and his daughter for another sister. Visual agnosia or prosopagnosia were not diagnosed, as the misidentification also took place during phone calls. On several occasions he mistook the hospital for the church he used to go to.

The disorder was first described in 1932 by P. Courbon and J. Tusques ("Illusions d'intermétamorphose et de la charme"), in the Journal: Annales Medico-Psychologiques issue 14, page 401-406.

Egomania has also been linked with alcoholism. 'Egomania drives many young alcoholics...alcoholism-created egomania'. A recovering alcoholic may well look back at the past as 'the land of self-loathing, egomania, and decay'.

The danger with the egomaniac is always that 'underneath the apparent over-confidence and bravado lies a fragile personality', driven by 'grandiose fantasies of boundless success or power or perfect love' which cannot be fulfilled.

Mild prenatal growth retardation

Moderate postnatal growth retardation

Mild to severe developmental delay

Severely impaired speech

Seizures

Microcephaly

Sparse hair

Progressive skin wrinkling

Thick, anteverted alae nasi

Long and broad philtrum

Large mouth

Thin upper and thick lower vermilion

Progressive prominence of distal phalanges

Progressive prominence of inter-phalangeal joints

Short metacarpals–metatarsals

Cutis marmorata also occurs in decompression sickness (DCS). Although it is considered Type I DCS, which is non-neurological, it is typically treated as if the patient has the more severe Type II DCS. This is because past experience in diving medicine has shown that patients initially presented with only this symptom have a high likelihood of progression to neurological, Type II, DCS without prompt treatment. The marbling does not resolve until few days after treatment, but any pruritus (itching) will likely disappear upon initial recompression.