Table 2.

Summery of themes and subthemes for the occurrence of mass psychogenic illness in Haraza Elementary School, Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, 2019.

Category (CAs)	Themes (TMs)	Orders/subthemes (Os/ST)
School community members	Theme 1: onset of an episode	Onset of illness occurred for the first time
		Incident occurred while students were learning English
		Index case does not have an economic problem
		Index case was a middle-level student
		No one told us the type of incident even health workers
Community members	Theme 2: community perception about the incident	Such type of incident does not occur before in the locality
Health professionals
		No one told us the type of incident including health professionals
		Such type of incident does not occur before in the locality
		No one told us the type of incident including health professionals
		Unknown communicable disease
		Blaming of an unidentified teacher being an evil eye
Community members	Theme 3: treatment sought by the community	Frequent follow-up of holy water
		Visiting a sorcerer
		Praying for “God”
		Not confident to attend the health service
		The disease not known by health professionals
Health professionals	Theme 4: health professional awareness	We do not know the disease and did not experience before
		The disease was unspecified
		It was difficult for us to manage the incident
Health professionals	Theme 5: psychosocial impacts of the illness	Discriminating complaints thinking being transmitted disease
Community members		School dropout
		Community frustration not sending students at school