Is it possible for psychological trauma to cause a lasting coma?

So, I was thinking about flavouring psychic damage and thought "If I'm anime > western civilization, then wouldn't it make sense for me to reflect it a bit more?"

In an anime, I watched, there was this episode where one of the main characters was attacked with a special "ray of light" that basically allowed the attacker to dig up the character's supressed memories, forcing her to live through them again in a personalized hell, essentially. Said character wasn't hurt physically, but fell into a coma and stayed like that until the last two episodes.

My idea was the excessive psychic damage could render people unconscious for variable periods of time.

Problem is, psychic damage can't truly change your brain, it can't access the brainstem and make you stop breathing. It can, however, deceive your senses and alter your hormone levels to an extent.

Particularly vivid hallucinations tend to trigger the release of a paralyzing chemical in creatures to prevent them from injuring or killing themselves. The admin put that defense there becuase "Screw your manchurian gold, I have sleeping pills!"

So, I wanted to know if its possible to make an average person fall into a coma (that stays there for a while, even after the hallucinations are gone), soley by forcing them to live through something incredibly horrifying in their head?

posted about 5 years ago

Mephistopheles‭

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