The emergence of ringing vertigo.

Ding dongmerrily on high, goes the famous Christmas carol, but for some of the United Kingdom’s 40 000 campanologists the bells have not been ringing so merrily. Instead, church bell ringers have this year been complaining of a disorder that has been forcing them to abandon their towers and steeples and seek out hypnotherapists and counsellors in search of a cure. Symptoms include vertigo, a sensation of the world caving in, anxiety, and a loss of feeling in the hands and feet. In some cases these have been so severe that ringers have taken to their beds. “I was unable to do anything for more than a week, apart from lie in bed with my eyes shut,” said one campanologist. Reports of the condition first surfaced earlier this year in the letters pages of theRingingWorld, the official weekly journal of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. The Ringing World more usually carries news of church restorations, peal reports, and details of various campanological festivals and meetings, but from May it began to attract a series of self submitted clinical case studies. The first came in a letter from Julie Mottershead of Ashtead, Surrey, who coined the term “ringing vertigo” by which the condition has since been known. She said, “I found that over a few sessions I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable ringing up [using an increasing angle of swing to turn the bells through nearly 180° to the ringing position], and then suddenly I could not ring at all—it was as if the world was caving in around me. This was all the more surprising as I am not in the least a ‘nervy’ person. “I went to my GP who prescribed anti-anxiety medication. And it worked—but I fear the effect is starting to wear off. I can still ring, but the fear that the ‘cave in’will occur is still there—and this in itself makes me anxious.” Ms Mottershead asked if any readers of the Ringing World were doctors, hypnotherapists, or practitioners of cognitive behavioural therapy, explaining, “It would be lovely to get some advice on how to proceed from someone who is familiar both with these symptoms and with ringing.” Her appeal triggered off months of correspondence from other affected ringers, psychiatrists, and counsellors. One bell ringer, quoting from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, described Ms Mottershead’s experiences as a panic attack, for which bell ringing provided numerous potential triggers: “It may be a fear of heights or of falling through the floor, of falling off a box, or a bell falling on you or a rope catching round your neck, of being unable to escape from the tower if there’s a fire.”