CULTURE-BOUND SYNDROMES

Amok (South Asia)

Amok or running amok is derived from the Malay/Indonesian word amuk, meaning mad with rage. It quite literally is a mad fit of rage where a person who hasn’t shown any previous signs of anger or inclination to violence will suddenly switch into homicidal maniac mode and attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone around them. Their fit will be followed by a bout of amnesia wherein the person will return to their premorbid state (i.e. the state before they went haywire) with no recollection of the incident. This violent outburst is prevalent almost exclusively among males. Episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders, or committing suicide. Many researchers theorize that amok is closely related to male honor. Some element of deep shame has prevented them from living an honourable life and running amok is a way of escaping the world (as the perpetrator usually gets killed) as well as re-establishing one’s reputation as a man to be feared and respected.

Koro or Penis Panics –(South Asia, Africa)

Also known as genital retraction syndrome (GRS), koro is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male cases, disappearing entirely. Koro most commonly strikes men, but rare cases are known to involve women and the fear that either their external genitals or nipples are retracting into the body. Though Koro itself is not physically harmful, and no actual retraction has ever taken place, injuries have occurred when koro-stricken men have resorted to apparatuses such as needles, hooks, fishing line, or shoe strings, to prevent the disappearance of their penises. (Typing that sentence just made my guts churn.) Some Western scholars claim that GRS is similar to the Western category of a panic attack, with sexual elaborations. In cultures where sexual anxiety is high and stories exist of death by genital retraction, a man in the right frame of mind could panic at the observation that his genitals are shrinking in response to cold or anxiety.

Pibloktoq or Arctic Hysteria (Arctic Circle)

It is probably safe to assume, that if you live in the Arctic you are already a stark raving mad lunatic. Pibloktoq is a condition that is prevalent in winter (how shocking!) and is exclusive to Eskimo societies living within the Arctic Circle. The condition is characterized by an abrupt dissociative episode of intense hysteria, frequently followed by convulsive seizures and coma lasting up to 12 hours. Symptoms can include intense screaming, uncontrolled wild behavior, depression, coprophagia (i.e. eating feces- nothing like warm poo on a cold day), insensitivity to extreme cold (such as running around in the snow naked), echolalia (senseless repetition of overheard words, e.g. red rum, red rum) and other irrational and dangerous acts. This condition is most often seen in Eskimo women and is linked to vitamin A toxicity (hypervitaminosis A) found in the native Eskimo diet which consists primarily of organ meats, arctic fish and mammal liver.

Grisi Siknis (Central America)

Grisi Siknis is a contagious, culture-bound syndrome that occurs predominantly among the Miskito people of eastern Central America and affects mainly young girls ranging from 15 to 18 years old. According to Dr. Phil Dennis of Texas Tech University, grisi siknis is typically characterized by long periods of anxiety, nausea, dizziness, irrational anger and fear, interlaced with short periods of rapid frenzy, in which the victim “lose[s] consciousness, believe[s] that devils are beating them and trying to have sexual relations with them”. In the majority of cases the victim will try and run away. Miskito tradition, according to Dennis, holds that grisi siknis is caused by the possession of an evil spirit. The victim may view other people as devils, feel no pain for bodily injuries and have absolute amnesia regarding their physical circumstances.

“Some grab machetes or broken bottles to wave off unseen assailants. Other victims are reported to have performed superhuman feats, vomited strange objects such as spiders, hair and coins and spoken in tongues. In some cases the semi-conscious victim will speak the names of the next to be infected, although it is not always accurate.”

Susto (Latin America)

Susto is a cultural illness, specifically a “fright sickness” characterized by a sudden intense fear of a threatening spirit. Most common among adult women (although men and children have also been affected), it is attributed to a “soul loss” resulting from a frightful or traumatic experience. Through this fright, Earth spirits capture a person’s soul removing it from their body, never again to return. Symptoms include fatigue, insomnia, feelings of loss and depression and eating disorders. Traditional Western medicine has not yet recognized susto but there are some similarities between susto and certain anxiety disorders, “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “acute stress disorder” in particular.

Anorexia Nervosa (North America, Western Europe)

Though anorexia mainly affects young girls and women living in Western societies, cases of anorexia are becoming increasingly common in places such as Singapore and China. A survey found that most of the patients tend to be from rich families, thus ruling out malnutrition as a cause, but a result. Anorexia is the severe restriction of food intake, associated with a morbid fear of obesity. In places in the world where food is scarce, the concern about getting fat is…  non-existent. For many anorexics, self-starvation is a way to feel in control. People with anorexia may feel powerless in their everyday lives, but they can control what they eat. Restricting food is a way to cope with painful feelings such as anger, shame, and self-loathing. Methods used to lose weight include excessive exercise, laxative use and purging, as symptoms of bulimia nervosa may overlap.

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Note: There are many other examples of drugs in other conflicts, like amphetamine-pumped child soldiers in Sierra Leone, but this list covers mainly global conflicts.

Napoleonic Wars

French & British

The harsh discipline that came with serving during the Napoleonic wars was counterbalanced by the regular consumption of alcohol. Alcohol became very important for maintaining morale and discipline in the army. Army officials knew that if they attempted to regulate alcohol use they would be met with insurmountable resistance. Alcohol was the only way soldiers could escape. Many soldiers would spend their entire month’s wages on alcohol.

Officers had standing orders to avoid drunken privates since they would often attack their superiors. These orders lasted until the end of the war.

Source: British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea by Scott Myerly

World War I

British

Part of a daily ration for the average British soldier included a half-gill of rum which is the equivalent of a eighth of a pint. Additional rations of rum were occasionally served prior to soldiers ‘going over’ (The term used for exiting the trench to advance on the enemy.) The amount given was at the discretion of the standing general.

Germans

German soldiers had a worse diet in terms of food but a much more varied diet when it came to alcohol. German soldiers had a daily ration that included a pint of beer, half a pint of wine and a quarter pint of spirits.

World War II

Germans

Drug use in World War II is easily the most institutionalized in recorded history. This was especially true for German military. The drug of choice for the German army was a methamphetamine designed to keep soldiers alert and functional for several hours/days. 35 million tablets of methamphetamine were shipped to the army and air force between just April and July 1940 alone. These methamphetamines were later banned in 1941 under the Opium Law but despite the ban a shipment of over 10 million tablets was sent to soldiers later that year.

Germans & Americans

The use of alcohol was also encouraged by the military. Alcohol became a crutch for many of the men serving at the time. This prevalent and habitual use of alcohol led to many otherwise preventable deaths and injuries. Production of bootlegged alcohol became a serious issue as many producers didn’t know the difference between consumable alcohol and methyl alcohol. Men who consumed spirits made with methyl alcohol became blind or succumbed to fatal alcohol poisoning. [Source]

Vietnam War

Americans

The drug of choice of American soldiers during the Vietnam War was marijuana. For a majority of the war, marijuana use was largely ignored by army officials. In 1968 a major government initiative forced the army the crack down on marijuana use. By this point the use of the drug had become far too prevalent for the army to effectively combat. Army arrests had reached 1000 per week at its height and treatment centers were inundated.

The army began a massive anti-marijuana propaganda campaign to try and curb its use among soldiers. Officials claimed it would cause harmful long-term psychological effects.

The main concern was that the use of marijuana was affecting missions. What many politicians and anti-marijuana lobbyists didn’t realize is that there was internal policing of marijuana use by the soldiers themselves. Marijuana did not affect military operations because it was only used in non-combat situations. The soldiers knew their lives were on the line and if men in their unit were using marijuana in combat situation it would compromise their safety. [Source]

Iraq II & Afghanistan

Americans

The statistics provided by the US military regarding the drug and alcohol abuse by soldiers is universally viewed as a gross misrepresentation of the actual problem that the military faces. Substance abuse is steadily on the rise and soldiers are returning home with life-altering drug addictions.

As it stands, there is a blanket ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy in the army and there are vastly differing opinions concerning drug use from one level of authority to the next. Medics are generally known to be the ‘dealers’ and as a soldier they’re your best bet if you’re looking to get drugs of any kind. [Source]

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From 1953 until the early 1970’s, Project MK-ULTRA was the CIA’s code name for a mind-control research program run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. Their purpose was to study mind-control, interrogation methods and behaviour modification. In order to manipulate mental states and alter brain function, doctors administered various types of drugs such as LSD, mescaline, heroin, morphine, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol, and sodium pentothal, usually without the subject’s awareness or consent.

Experiments were tested on CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, government agents, prostitutes, members of the public and mentally ill patients [source].

Research and goals for the project included:
• Substances which would enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.
• Substances which would promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
• Materials and physical methods which would produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
• Substances which would produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.
• A material which would cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence would find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on Human Resources. August 3, 1977. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.

In 1964, the project was renamed MK-SEARCH. This project attempted to create a “perfect truth drug” which could then be used to interrogate suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War.

In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files be destroyed. A full investigation of MK-ULTRA will therefore never be possible.

Project MK-ULTRA was the inspiration behind The Manchurian Candidate.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Led by famous psychologist Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971, was executed in order to show how roles define behaviour. Zimbardo tried to demonstrate that prison guards and convicts would behave in ways they thought was required. Participants were offered $15 per day and the study was to last two weeks.

Twenty-four male subjects, considered to be most mentally and emotionally stable, were chosen. Zimbardo divided the participants evenly into guards and prisoners, at random. He himself was going to take on the role of prison warden. The guards were given one rule: no physical punishment allowed, but other than that, they were able to run the prison as they see fit. The guards were outfitted in military attire and sunglasses and also provided batons. The prisoners, in contrast, were dressed in smocks and refused permission to wear underwear.

Prisoners were only to be addressed by their identity numbers and also had a small chain around one ankle. On the first day of the experiment, prisoners were instructed to stay at home and wait to be ‘called’ for the start of the experiment. Their homes were raided by the real Paolo Alto police, they were charged with armed-robbery, read their rights and had their fingerprints and mug shots taken. They were strip-searched and taken to the basement of Stanford: ‘the mock prison’.

The guards were brutal, humiliating and demoralizing to the prisoners. By the second day prisoners were already revolting, wanting to be let out. Zimbardo and his colleagues were also beginning to be affected by the experiment, trying to keep the revolting prisoner subjects in detention and siding with guards.
On the sixth day, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D., (also the fiancée of Zimbardo), was brought in to interview the guards and prisoners. She was stunned by what she saw and demanded that the experiment be terminated. Apparently, Maslach was the only person to even raise any concerns out of the fifty external visitors that had come to examine the experiment.
Zimbardo certainly managed to prove his theory, revealing a disturbing truth about the potential for evil that lies in human nature.

Aversion Therapy for Curing Homosexuality

Aversion therapy is a psychiatric treatment where a patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort (the therapy undergone by Stanley Kubrick’s twisted character Alex DeLarge in the 1971 classic, A Clockwork Orange). Used in order to ‘cure’ homosexuality, it was only in 2006 that aversion therapy to treat homosexuality was considered to be a violation of the codes of conduct and professional guidelines of the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association.

In 1962, 29 year old Captain Billy Clegg-Hill of the Royal Tank Regiment, was arrested in a police swoop in Southampton and sentenced to six months of aversion therapy. After three days of therapy, he died. Doctors and authorities covered up his death, claiming he died of “natural causes”. But thirty four years after his death, the doctor who conducted the post-mortem confirmed that he had actually died from a coma and convulsions resulting from injections of apomorphine, a potent vomit-inducing drug. Doctor’s would show Clegg-Hill pin-up pictures of men, then inject him with apomorphine, causing him to become violently ill. The doctor’s believed that he would eventually associate men with nausea and vomiting. The idea of homosexuality would be so repugnant that he would subsequently become straight.

In 1965, 19 year old Peter Price was sent to a psychiatric hospital to treat his homosexuality. Doctors forced him to lie in a bed filled with his own vomit, urine and feces for three days while they would show him images of half-naked men, inject him with drugs and play tapes telling him he was a ‘dirty queer’. He was also administered electric shocks, while being shown erotic pictures of attractive men.

The Monster Study

Dubbed the ‘monster study’, the experiment was conducted by speech expert Wendell Johnson, led in part by graduate student Mary Tudor Jacobs in 1939. Johnson believed that stuttering was a learned behavior, attributed to outside factors such as constant criticism from a parent to its child for even the slightest speech imperfections. 22 orphan children with no prior speech impediment were chosen for the experiment. Wendell’s goal was to induce the disorder in orphans.

One group of orphans received praise for positive speech therapy whereas the other group was belittled, badgered and told they were stutterers. By the end of the study, none of the test subjects in the negative therapy group became stutterers, but the experience caused them low self-esteem and irreparable damage.

Little Albert

In order to determine whether fear was innate or a conditioned response, father of behaviorism, John Watson, used a nine month old orphan he nicknamed Little Albert to test his theory. Watson began the experiment by placing Little Albert in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert, who was allowed to play with it. Albert was not scared.

For two months he was exposed to various things without any sort of conditioning; a white rabbit, a monkey, masks etc… Watson placed Albert in a room again with the rat, however this time, when Albert would touch the rat, Watson would make loud sounds behind him, such as the striking of a steel bar with a hammer. When this occurred, Albert would get frightened and begin to cry. Watson continued to do this until eventually, Albert became very distressed whenever exposed to the rat. Eventually, Albert associated anything fluffy or white with the loud noise. Little Albert was never desensitized to his fear and was released from the hospital before Watson was able to do so.

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Smallpox

They were brave warriors who vastly outnumbered their European invaders. They were no match however, for Old World diseases like smallpox, which wiped out 90 to 95% of the native population inhabiting the Americas. In the last hundred years, smallpox has caused the deaths of over 300 million people across the globe. Throughout the 18th century it killed over 60 million people in Europe alone. And according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 15 million contracted the disease and two million died as recently as 1967 (source).

Smallpox, which only exists in humans, has been decimating populations for thousands of years. It is said to have begun in Egypt nearly four thousand years ago, and as people began to travel the world they began to spread the disease to India, China, Japan, Europe, America, and even Australia. It causes sufferers to have fluid filled blisters in their throats, mouths, and on their skin. Depending on the constitutions of the carrier, smallpox would lead to blindness, disfigurement, and death. Of the two types of smallpox, Variola major and Variola minor, the former causes most of the casualties as the rashes are more extreme and the fever much higher.

In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner in England discovered that by inoculating a young boy with the fluid from a cowpox lesion, the young boy became immune to smallpox. He is credited with the world’s first “vaccination,” as the word comes from the Latin word “vacca” meaning cow. Smallpox was declared eradicated on May 8th, 1980.

Cholera

When a human eats food or drinks water that has been infected with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, he or she can be dead in less than 4 hours without the proper treatment. The cholera disease attacks the lining of the small intestine and causes incredible amounts of diarrhea, vomiting, fever, dehydration, a critical drop in blood pressure, exhaustion and death.

The first outbreak of cholera reared its nasty head in 1817 in Calcutta, after the great Kumbh festival at Hardwar in the Upper Ganges of India. The festival attracted thousands of people from all over the country. Pilgrims from the Lower Bengal brought the bacterium to the party, and as they relieved themselves in the Ganges River, which was shared by everybody during the three month festival, they started a pandemic which would spread to the four corners of the earth. Travellers were literally bringing boatloads of the disease from port to port as they sailed the oceans from country to country. During the 19th century alone Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America all reported death tolls from the hundreds of thousands, to the millions as a result of cholera. India got hit the hardest however, with estimated deaths of nearly 40 million people.

Influenza

The prize for the Most Globally Devastating Epidemic goes to the influenza or Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Just as World War I was coming to an end, thousands of people around the world were suddenly getting sick with what they believed at the time to be a common cold. In less than two years, an estimated 20-100 million people around the world were dead from type A influenza, wiping out 2.5% to 5% of the world’s population. It was widely believed that this was mother nature’s response to the death and destruction which occurred during the Great War. The end of the war certainly helped to spread the disease, as millions of infected soldiers brought it back to their home countries when the fighting was over. By 1919, 25% of Americans were infected with influenza.

The disease was widely spread in the air from coughing and sneezing, from contact with saliva, feces and blood. Symptoms included fever, muscle aches (especially in the back and legs), headaches, coughing, and overall weakness. As was mentioned earlier, it is for these reasons that many people perished without any treatment. They thought they had a common cold, and in less than a day, they’d be gone. Severe pneumonia was also a symptom of influenza infection, which would easily claim the lives of the already weakened victims.

Black Death

In the four years between 1347 and 1351, 75 million people died as the result of a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, or the plague. Stories vary as to where the disease started, but some believe that it began in the lungs of the bobac variety of marmot in China. Fleas would then bite the marmots, and would subsequently infect every animal they would bite afterwards, especially rats. These diseased rats and fleas would follow merchants in ships as they sailed along trade routes across Asia and into Europe.

One group sailing towards Europe was a Tartar army from central Asia, who in their attempts to conquer a small city in the Crimea, were all but wiped out from some mysterious disease. As they departed in defeat they hurled the corpses of their infected soldiers into the heart of the city via catapults. A group of Italian merchants who were living in the city at the time quickly left the city and made their way back home in twelve vessels. Not only were most of the sailors dead or dying by the time they reached Sicily, but they had brought enough infected fleas and rate to spread the plague throughout Europe and into Northern Africa. Out of 40 million people living in Europe at the time, 25 million perished.

The plague manifested itself in three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Sufferers of the bubonic plague would develop swollen lymph nodes or buboes on their necks, armpits, and groin. These skin bubbles would ooze blood, puss, and would turn black as the skin decays. Sufferers would usually die within a week. Pneumonic plague would infect the lungs causing victims to suffocate or drown, and the septicemic plague is a form of blood poisoning which rots the extremities and turns the skin black.

Malaria

As far as the animal kingdom is concerned, mosquitoes kill more humans than all the others combined. A tiny bite from this tiny f$%&er is all it takes to infect someone with Plasmodium, a nasty little parasite which multiplies in the liver and then goes on to infect the red blood cells. If gone untreated, malaria can kill its victim in less than two weeks, disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. While the malaria pandemic has spread to the Americas and various parts of Asia, 85-90% of the fatalities occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where the parasite kills over one million people per year. Plasmodium has co-existed with humans for over 10,000 years, but President Obama has declared that the United States, along with its world partners, will work to eradicate malaria by 2015.

Additional: AIDS

In the 30 years scientists first discovered the existence of the AIDS virus, more than 25 million people worldwide have died from AIDS infections. According to World Health Organization (WHO), close to 40 million people are currently infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) which is the virus that causes AIDS.

Although the number of people infected with AIDS continues to rise around the world, parts of Africa maintain the highest number of HIV infected. Sub-Sahara Africa accounts for over 60% of all HIV positive cases for the entire world.

Human Immunodeficiency virus is passed from person to person when infected blood, semen, or vaginal secretions come in contact with an uninfected person’s broken skin or mucous membranes.

Since this article was first written, there has only been one swine flu related death outside of Mexico. A 23-month-old toddler passed away in Houston, Texas this week, the family of which has received the “thoughts and prayers” from President Obama. The child was a resident of Mexico, and of the 66 cases of the flu in the U.S. and 13 in Canada, all can be traced back to Mexican visits. If you or anyone you know has been to Mexico recently or has come into contact with someone who has, and you’re experiencing respiratory problems, fever, sever coughing, headaches, vomiting and or diarrhea, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. If caught early, the swine flu is treatable, it can be stopped from spreading to others, and will hopefully never reach the levels of casualties of pandemics past.

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