A researcher claims Gulf War Syndrome, recovered memories of sexual abuse, and alien abductions have something in common - they are all in our minds, symptoms of mass cultural hysteria. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, new research on illness and the mind. Also, overcoming the shame of male depression.

SEGMENT 1

Elaine Showalter makes a lot of people angry with her assertion that Gulf War veterans are suffering from a form of shell shock. She tells Steve Paulson that the Gulf vets' illness is typical of a lot of modern syndromes -- psychosomatic illness that becomes a "hysterical epidemic." Showalter teaches English at Princeton and is the author of "Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media."

SEGMENT 2:

Francine Shapiro is the originator of EMDR therapy - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming. She tells Anne Strainchamps how EMDR works and that it achieves dramatically successful effects on patients who've suffered all sorts of trauma. Shapiro is a senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California and the author of "EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress and Trauma."

SEGMENT 3:

Psychotherapist Terrance Real specializes in treating male depression. He tells Jim Fleming that the conventional wisdom is wrong: women are not four times as likely as men to suffer depression. He says that men experience and manifest depression differently than women. Men's "covert depression" is likely to take the form of substance abuse, workaholic behavior, or violent "acting out." Real is the author of "I Don't Want to Talk about It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression."

Distribution dates:

• week of 05/04/97 - hour 3