If you act immediately and do something to change the emotional state like sleep or change the top emotion etc the sim will not die. if you leave a sim in the hysterical emotional state then the will eventually die.
Because you directed your sim to drink the focused potion, and so therefore become focused, your sim lived.
Thanks, Playalot. I was glad that my Sim had that focused potion.
The last time he died of hysteria, everyone was telling jokes a lot at a big dinner party with about 20 Sims in total, but now, I only have them tell one joke at a time and I have them invite maybe 5 Sims at a time. I really don't know what triggered his hysteria, but at least he had that focused potion. Of course, it was the same Sim as last time.
Now, I will put about 10 focused potions in each of my main Sim family's inventories. It's good to know that sleep works, too. I used that as a backup, in case that potion didn't do enough.
If I remember the last time I had a sim die of Hysterical, they had to become Very Hysterical in order to die.
Thanks Franki. That makes sense, but I thought that my Sim would go into very hysterical very, very quickly or be hysterical for too long. I think the 4th level of any emotional state is when a Sim actually dies.
At least Sim children can only die by fire or drowning. As a precaution, all of my playable Sim children have a 10 motor skill, the never weary trait, the hardly hungry trait, the steel bladder trait and the antiseptic trait.
All of my playable adults have completed the Freelance Botanist aspiration, so they're fireproof, cooking and gourmet cooking level 10, and have the grill masters trait, and therefore, the children are pretty safe from fire because they can't light a fire or use the stove or grill, and I don't let the adults "add a log" to the campfire and none of my Sims ever go near a bonfire.