www.Heart-Diet.org

You didn’t hear about susto even if you are fro Latin America? Of course. I still have book form my Medical Anthropology class. What I can say the description of susto here is very innancurate, and no wonder Latin Americans didn’t hear about it. If we would like to apply such criteria, we will need to add anther illness in US:social phobia. How many of you in US hear about it, or know someone who had such illness? Sorry to joke about it, as people suffer, but this is about the rarity of a disease. Anorexia, in comparrision to susto, is very common. Ans symptoms of susto is not including the case of severs fear of threatening spirit. (Intense fear of threatening spirit happens in the US more often than you think).

What the author here describes are the cases of susto among Indians. The fullest account of susto was given by Gillin, in 1948. This was the case of Pokemam Indian woman from San Luis Jilotepecque. Another well described case was (by Ruble, in 1960), was the case of a non- Indian woman. Foster described in 1951 the case of a Popoluca Indian. Than there were Cases in Texas, among citizens born in US. Anthropological field works was caried out among the Chinantec of San Lucas in 1950,and in the Tzotzil of San Bartholome de Los Lllanos, etc. Not many cases, really. Of course the interest was in healing rates, the rites of elicitation performed by native healers. It is belived that susto was caused by offending a guardian spirit of a locality: spirits of earth and water, or animals. No wonder those who commented here never heard of it. I would be surprised if you did.

Also susto syndrome among non-Indians has nothing to do with belief of spirit loss. It is a feeling of depression, sadness, lack of stamina, loss of appetite, loss of interest in personal hygiene, loss of strength and weight, depression, introversion, and sometimes seizures. Those symptoms follow situations of intense stress, when a patient felt inadequate in a situation, intense fright.

I think people get confused when they read stuff like “epidemiological model,” and get confused. They think it is about cases which are common. Misunderstanding of professional jargon. There is also perception in US about Latin America which is very inacurate.

How we process information based on internet is of intense interest to many anthropologists. The wikipedia article is based on Rubel’s writing, and obviousuly the writing was misunderstood. There are citations to be added. Rubel also wrote about cultural relevancy of this syndrome among suspectible populations. Now this is interesting:population of Latin America and susto- all people are the suspectible population? No way. Or US is the suspectible population because of cases in Texas? No way. We need to exercise good judgement in such cases, not jump to conclusions, but I know it is tempting when wikipedia article gives confused info. Amok was a rare case too.
Greetings to all.