Background: Jerusalem's psychiatrists expect to encounter, as the millennium approaches, an ever-increasing number of tourists who, upon arriving in Jerusalem, may suffer psychotic decompensation.
Aims: To describe the Jerusalem syndrome as a unique acute psychotic state.
Method: This analysis is based on accumulated clinical experience and phenomenological data consisting of cultural and religious perspectives.
Results: Three main categories of the syndrome are identified and described, with special focus on the category pertaining to spontaneous manifestations, unconfounded by previous psychotic history or psychopathology.
Conclusions: The discrete form of the Jerusalem syndrome is related to religious excitement induced by proximity to the holy places of Jerusalem, and is indicated by seven characteristic sequential stages.