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Culture Bound Syndromes
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2003
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When I began this project I understood that if Subliminal Distraction and the Conflict of Physiology were a serious stressor for mental illness, they, evidenced by the episodes caused by the phenomenon, would appear everywhere around the world.
Culture Bound Syndromes are part of the proof that this is so.
When family groups live in too-small single-room arrangements or when large groups live in a compact single-room or other structure the proximity of the individuals will eventually create Subliminal Distraction exposure.
We all witnessed video of the Virginia Tech shooter ranting his psychotic paranoid delusions. Cho had created this same situation when he used the suite common room as a study area where roommates walked by ignoring him.
If the shooting incident had happened in a business it would have met the definition of Going Postal, a Culture Bound Syndrome of the United States
If it had happened in Malaysia it would have been called Amok. Different weapons would have been used and the ethnic culture would have shaped the details but the episode would have been the same.
In the 1830's too-small fur trappers cabins created Subliminal Distraction. The berserk episode of violence was called Cabin Fever.
Two person dorm rooms create the same opportunity if the study desks do not have Cubicle Level Protection. Suicides and disappearances of college students are outcomes of this exposure. Other CBS's around the world produce thoughts of suicide.
Depression, as an outcome of SD exposure, can be seen in the failed experiences of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. Qi Gong Psychotic Reaction is a CBS of China that is included in the DSM. Depression is one outcome of other CBS's in the list of syndromes below.
This establishes, or points to the conclusion, that clinical depression has a single cause, Subliminal Distraction, and is not connected to brain disease or chemical imbalances.
A new page, a text only article, has been started. You may be more comfortable reading that first then returning to this page of research notes. Click Here
This page is not just a listing of Culture Bound Syndromes.
I intend to demonstrate the cause of Culture Bound Syndromes.
They are a poorly understood concept.
Although believed to be caused by local ethnic and cultural stresses,
some of them appear world wide independent of culture.
This site does not diagnose or offer treatment but prevention may help with these symptoms.
Click this line to skip the introductory text about this site.
Click this line to skip to the list of Syndromes.
This site has been said to be confusing and difficult. That is because it is a psychology project.
The text is unfinished and there is missing information. Do the best you can.
This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected until the 1960's.
In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.
It caused mental breaks for office workers.
You will find this material hard to believe.
This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.
For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.
The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.
The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.
This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.
The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.
If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.
Long term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga
If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.
This site gets many hits on a search string "state of mental illness Malaysia." If you are in Malaysia and can supply information on the habits and occupations of victims of Amok email the Webmaster. Researcher
Culture Bound Syndromes
(Current edit begins here 03/16/2008.)
Introduction
Culture Bound Syndromes and Culture Specific Diseases are not the same phenomenon. Diseases are caused by pathogens, physical conditions, or infections. CBS's are behaviors that may include physical symptoms. 'Widely Held Beliefs' are ethnic explanations for physical conditions. They are sometimes said to be 'Idioms of Distress.'
This page argues that a single phenomenon is causing many of the Culture Bound Syndromes. Once you understand this you may eliminate some suggested syndromes and add other disorders that are not now considered CBS's
Culture Bound Syndromes have been included in the DSM for the first time. Because investigators do not know what causes them some physical illnesses may be included on web pages about CBS's. These are common diseases which have local or ethnic names and descriptions. In primitive parts of the world magic worked against the sufferer is often blamed for illness.
Through the centuries there have been mental breaks that changed the course of history. The cause of those mental breaks would not be discovered until designers made a mistake in building the first close-spaced office workstations beginning in the 1950's.
Haworth introduced the first room partition walls in 1953. Herman Miller introduced the Action Office One in 1964, and by 1968 had added side-vision-blocking panels to it.
The Cubicle became the industry standard to prevent those mental breaks in business offices. The phenomenon is called Subliminal Distraction in other countries. I have not found a name for it in the United States. Subliminal Distraction has another meaning in psychology here.
Those designers and the psychologists that solved the problem did not understand what they had found. They thought they had caused the problem for the first time and they only applied the discovery to office design. . But incidents such as the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898/99 had already happened. Cabin Fever had appeared during the fur trapping period in the United States. And Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease had already been discovered and evaluated, 1880's.
Those three incidents and phenomena have significance to understanding Culture Bound Syndromes.
Start buy grouping CBS's into two sections. There will be overlap so we begin with obvious mental events. When we finish there will still be some CBS's that cannot be placed in a group because of conflicting information or just the dearth of information about the syndrome.
Included in the listings of Culture Bound Syndromes are mental events. These may be grouped in two ways.
The first grouping:
A sudden onset dissociative or psychotic episode;
A reaction and understanding, explanation, of the episode which is determined by ethnic and cultural values;
A full remission with no apparent after effects;
Sometimes the episode involves violence and automatism;
Paranoia and anxiety may be a major feature;
There may be amnesia of the events during the episode.
Hearing Voices is often mentioned but usually in the local ethnic understanding, spirit possession or speaking to ancestors.
This list conforms to the general diagnosis Brief Psychotic Disorder.
A second Grouping:
This grouping is about activities that engage the conflict of physiology explored on this site.
The effected person had an occupation or activity which included:
Confinement of two or more people in small over-wintering living quarters, (Includes Longhouses in the south pacific, exception to cold weather and small space housing);
Lived in single-room arrangements, primitive locations or inner cities, huts, hogans, kivas;
Was a craft worker in unprotected workspace;
Was a student in western style classrooms;
Worked as Knowledge worker in a business where Cubicle Level Protection is not provided, (Going Postal);
Participant in a repeating group ritual or exercise where eyes-open concentration is required, (Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga), (The Awakening of Kundalini is not considered a CBS but it is the same phenomenon.)
These two groups overlap. Confusion arises because symptoms may vary from the violence of Amok to the strange behavior of removing clothes and running across snow and ice.
Investigators of Culture Bound Syndromes have been missing a key piece of information. That is the existence of a conflict of physiology.
The DSM is a collection of observations to group mental disorders into mood disorders and psychotic disorders. This system of categorization fails when Culture Bound Syndromes are considered because the behaviors are not similar. There is no apparent common observed behavior for most CBS's. The jumping diseases, plus Amok, Going Postal and Iich'aa are exceptions to that. And that's where the information to understand them all is.
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Beginning text for full article. This is a draft text and the material above will be included in the final version of the article.
Remember that this page represents notes for research. You may read or quote with attribution but the final version may be very different from this text.
Some Culture Bound Syndromes have the same cause.
The long text explanation that began on this page has been moved. It is now the first draft of an article. Here
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The Template
There are three items that create the template to cause exposure to this phenomenon.
A relatively stationary posture. (Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga are the exception.)
An activity that requires eyes-open concentration. (Daydreaming is enough to engage the phenomenon.)
Repeating detectable movement from behind to cause a peripheral vision reflex.
If the subject has the ability to ignore the reflexes the phenomenon is engaged. Many hours daily for many days are required to cause the mental break. ICU Psychosis may be the exception. Humans see by reflected light so that lighting must be adequate.
If the subjects are sensitive to or have increased abilities to detect threat movement, ADD and ADHD in children or Panic Attacks in adults are possible outcomes. One of the unfathomed features of ADD and ADHD is that children seem to "grow out of it." The syndromes stop when too-close side-by-side seating in class rooms stop. Panic attacks can start and stop for no apparent reason.
Scattered around the Internet are anecdotal stories of individuals whose panic attacks stopped when they changed apartments or found new employment.
As a historical note single-room living arrangements allow the "special conditions" to be created. These exist around the world as traditional ethnic housing.
Traditional Navajo hogans are single-room living spaces. http://waltonfeed.com/peoples/navajo/hogan.html
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Conflict of Physiology
The conflict of our physiology explored on this site is that although you can ignore peripheral vision reflexes, the physiology of human sight will not allow you to 'stop seeing' the movement that causes them. You cannot tell your brain to stop subliminally detecting that movement and attempting to force the reflex.
The phenomenon is silent, painless and invisible. Neither victims nor observers will be aware that exposure is happening.
Engineers designing the first close-spaced office workstations discovered the phenomenon when Knowledge workers using their first production examples began to have bizarre or psychotic episodes. The Modern Cubicle
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Accidental Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning does not work well with humans because we have knowledge of self and of our surroundings. The detection of threat movement happens subliminally so we are never aware our subconscious is being bombarded with a stimulus. Humans have two vision systems conscious sight and peripheral vision. The physiology of sight is such that the two systems have separate channels into the brain.
Our far peripheral vision covers two separate vision fields rather than the overlapping fields of conscious sight. This is monocular vision. If far peripheral vision did not function subliminally we could not resolve those two peripheral vision fields with conscious sight.
When you ignore peripheral vision reflexes the connection to consciousness is broken. If your brain perceives the continuing stimulus as reinforcement of contemporaneous thought or activities, operant conditioning happens.
In the case of Qi Gong the reinforcement is positive to create the belief you are improving health through the direction and balancing of Qi, "chee," within the body.
Psychology lectures explain that as the repeating reflexes are ignored a conflict arises then builds to a mental break.
This produces the psychotic episode of Qi Gong. Most authoritative sites on Qi Gong now acknowledge that the psychotic episodes happen when too many exercise sessions are done in a compact time frame. Those sites do not know what causes the psychotic episodes.
Periods of stationary eyes-closed meditation, in Kundalini Yoga, shorten the eyes-open exercise portion of the session. That limits the number of threat detection incidents and spreads those instances over time from session to session. There are fewer detection incidents per hours of exercise.
This has the opposite effect from what you would expect.
Short intense periods of stimulation caused by these threat detection incidents produces a temporary episode. Most resolve with no treatment. But low levels of stimulation that are repeated for long periods of time, produce permanently altered, psychotic, mental states. Panic Attacks are created with some rates of exposure. It is not clear how the different outcomes are caused.
The onset of psychiatric symptoms in Kundalini Yoga, as the mental event approaches, is viewed as a desired result. Participants are told that the perceived effects, and the altered mental state, is the Awakening of Kundalini.
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Engineering Discovery
Just after WWII and the Korean War a group of business men hired designers and engineers to research and redesign the business office. They wanted to make moveable workstations that could be grouped for different projects. At that time there were no computers and all engineering work was done in very large rooms with row after row of desks, and drafting tables.
The Bull Pen system was used in other places. This system is a private office for managers with a large outer room for other workers. The workers sat at open unprotected desks. You can see this type office arrangement any night on episodes of Barney Miller, Law and Order, and NYPD Blue.
Nervous Breakdowns, now called Dissociative Mental Breaks, happened and no one knew what caused them. Mental weakness of the victim was often believed to be the cause. This form of sexism, ethnic and cultural racism still dominates the thinking behind the DSM. See: Cause of Psychotic Mental Illness.
An example of a mental event caused by the defective workplace design is the disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little.
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Peripheral Vision Reflexes
Peripheral vision reflexes are an evolutionarily developed, retained, warning system. For early man or pre-humans to survive they needed a system to warn them of predators approaching from behind. To function it must work all the time no matter what you are doing. If you had the ability to turn the brain system off at will, it could not warn you in critical situations.
The act of concentrating on something at arm's length, in your hand for instance, causes physiological changes in the eye.
When you focus on a close object your eye accommodates by changing the shape of the lens. This shape-change expands the area covered by Subliminal Peripheral Vision.
Plitz's reflex, or Attention Reflex, changes the size of your pupil. This floods the retina with ambient light desensitizing the rods so that only a large movement close by will trigger a reflex.
The Syndromes
This list includes items not considered to be CBS's. As I develop this page I will clarify the reason for this. Until I can finish use the page links to access VPN site pages about alien abduction phenomenon, ADD-ADHD, the Awakening of Kundalini, and Panic Attacks
Some material may not apply but will be left in place while the investigation continues.
Scroll through the expanded definitions below to find causation. Some syndromes have more than one entry.
Other psychiatric syndromes and events.
Spirit Possession
Spirit possession is viewed on this site as a combination of a psychotic episode, hallucination, and hearing voices. Over time the subject accepts this altered mental state and it becomes a learned behavior. The article linked below has a different outlook and discusses spirit possession in the DSM.
In primitive societies being able to communicate with ancestors is held in high esteem. The initial episode is caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction but group acceptance rewards the subject to repeat the behavior. This is not intentional deception. The subject believes that he or she has the power to speak to or for the dead. Many CBS's involving a dissociative episode include amnesia of the events during the acute phase. With repeated exposure they do hear the voices and begin to experience bizarre beliefs.
These beliefs appear in long term users of Qi Gong. They hold beliefs that are impossible (superhuman strength, supernatural powers) and cannot be dissuaded from those beliefs.
The DSM does not consider episodes of possession psychotic if the culture accepts the belief and it caused the subject no life limiting problems.
In Christian beliefs the spirit possession includes speaking in tongues.
"If therefore, the whole church assembles, and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?. . .do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order (I Corinthians, 14)."
These episodes appeared in early church history witnessed by the quote from St. Paul's letter. Speaking in tongues is sought by charismatic believers as evidence that they have achieved contact with the Holy Spirit. Today speaking in tongues can be an emotionally based behavior but in the early church it was most likely caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction in small rooms where services would have been held to escape detection by civil authorities.
http://www.meta-religion.com/Psychiatry/Demonic_possesion/possession_experience.htm
Reprint of case history from GQ magazine, August 1999.
"Psychiatrists and psychologists around the country, at major universities and hospitals, are studying religious experience as a natural, complex human phenomenon, and many of these professionals, noting the seeming similarities between religious ecstasy and psychosis, have concluded that psychosis and mysticism are closely related conditions, maybe so close that the differences lie only in the way society judges them."
The point on this site is the two experiences are similar because they are created by exposure to the same phenomenon. EST produced a few psychotic episodes. All those subjects did was listen to a speaker while sitting in a 'large group training seminar.' See the EST VPN site page. Follow up with the Hutterite CBS Anfechtung below.
http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/dsm4/cases/gooding.htm
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Other observed disorders that may not be Culture Bound Syndromes.
These may be local ethnic explanations of symptoms caused by illness.
Dhat Syndrome - India - Belief that semen is being passed in urine and that the victim has impotence and premature ejaculation. Occasionally women complain of Dhat when they have leucorrhea, white vaginal discharge. Symptoms are guilt, anxiety, weakness, palpitations, and insomnia.
If investigation shows that the victims have exposure to Subliminal Distraction sufficient to cause psychopathology then this would be a CBS.
The link below right is a major paper from the British Journal of Psychiatry.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/184/3/200
This journal article briefly mentions Dhat and states that it is a widely held belief not delusional. Victims use the expression to explain illness.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7106/473
Gilahari Lizard Syndrome - India - is a belief that a blood filled swelling is moving toward the neck and will stop the victim's breathing if it is not crushed. In the one case cited the swelling was thought to be on the back.
If the belief that a swelling is moving to the neck is a hallucination, then suspicion that Lizard Syndrome is a CBS would be raised. The first question to ask is what activities do victims have that would expose them to repeating Subliminal Distraction. The next problem is what happens in the culture to create this fear. The fear is too specific unless there is communication of the proposed malady between victims. The citing article reported that other women interviewed stated that they too had experienced the problem.
Example: Windigo Psychosis is the belief that someone is being stalked by or that they are becoming the Windigo. The Windigo is a fable, the bogeyman of Native American Folk Lore. When the dissociative episode happens the knowledge of the Windigo is in the person's mind. What placed the fear of swellings moving under the skin in the minds of victims of Lizard Syndrome?
In those two cases. Dhat and Gilahari Lizard Syndrome, the victim would have had a silent mental event. If the same sensations recorded in the physio-Kundalini complex are present and they might supply the stimulus to create the delusional episode. But the nature of that episode is and must be shaped by the victims previous experience and memory.
There are ample examples of mass hysteria that have little connection to reality.
http://www.ijponline.org/Jan/indIJPJanGilahari.html
Nodding syndrome - Sudan - Children begin to nod at the sight of food - said to progress to seizures, mental retardation, and death from the inability to eat. If true then it would seem to be the onset of a neurological disorder. One site mentioned that EEG and Neurological investigations support that it is a progressive brain disease. Small children in the Sudan would not nave been exposed to Subliminal Distraction but thirteen year-olds would. One hospital reports some recoveries.
"When it comes, it looks like a black
cloud but in the shape of a human," said Martha. "That's all I know. At the end,
I find myself on the floor."
It may be that symptoms of exposure to Subliminal Distraction that are seen in victims of Nodding Syndrome are there because anyone, especially those who are weak and stationary in bed can be exposed to Subliminal Distraction. It would appear as dual diagnosis. ICU Psychosis is an example. It would have no association with the neurological disease. There isn't enough information or cases to evaluate the possibility.
Has personal account of victim and candy quote. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/28/health/main596493.shtml
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=26604
WHO Southern Sudan Health Update http://www.who.int/disasters/repo/9182.pdf
News story includes reported recoveries. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/03/health/main597751.shtml
Mal de Ojo ("evil eye") or just "Ojo"
A syndrome usually of children the symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea and fever, it occurs in Mediterranean and Hispanic areas. This appears to be an illness with a local ethnic name, not a CBS. Other sites list the phrase as an expression of distress. Like Dhat it is an explanation of illness and a widespread belief..
Folk beliefs include the superstition that immediate touching of the perpetrator will prevent the disease. Cures include passing a egg over the victim (rubbing), then observing the progress of the egg's condition when broken in a bowl and placed under the bed of the sufferer. Healers may claim that resistance between the egg and skin can diagnosis the disease.
Although fright can be so severe that vomiting happens, fever is not usually a symptom of a mental event. Young children being involved is also an eliminator for Culture Bound Syndromes. They do not have sufficient attention span to be victims of Subliminal Distraction.
Outside the US in small countries the classroom seating that copies the design problem would not be enough to cause symptoms.
Too close living arrangements with other siblings moving around the stationary concentrating child would cause exposure. (In the 1930's the incidence of Schizophrenia was higher in cities compared to rural rates. This made investigators believe deprivation caused Schizophrenia. But the low income groups would have had many family members in tiny apartments.)
Although some connection to dissociation might appear there is no reference located so far. That means that Mal de Ojo is an "idiom of distress" used to account for normal illness.
http://www.rice.edu/projects/HispanicHealth/Courses/mod7/ojo.html
CVS - Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome is included here because of the vomiting symptom. I have just located this problem. Children and adults have repeating episodes of vomiting. They happen at unpredictable times. Some advance to the point that emergency treatment is necessary to prevent dehydration. The cause is unknown.
Nakalanga Syndrome - Uganda - Similar to Nodding Syndrome - Symptoms are convulsions, stunted growth and nodding. CJD has been suspected. One victim nodded with local food but not American food including candy bars. The WHO investigated the problem in 2002. Age of one victim given as 13. Victims die from neurological degeneration.
It is possible that children who have degenerative brain diseases are less active, sit and watch others, or daydream. If that is true they could have a dual diagnosis to confuse symptoms.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8651377&dopt=Abstract
Nervios
Symptoms include headache, claimed brain ache, emotional labiality, tearfulness, sleep problems and anxiety, among Latinos in the US and Latin America. There isn't enough specificity to conclude that this syndrome includes mental events.
As with the other suspected CBS's above investigations to find if victims have exposure to Subliminal Distraction would change that.
sangue dormido (sleeping blood)
Found in Portuguese Cape Verdeans, the symptoms include pain, numbness, shaking, convulsions, blindness, heart attack, infection, stroke, and miscarriage. That list of symptoms would not involve a mental event. It is not clear how this syndrome should be evaluated. Many sites list these as "idioms of distress." They are local names for disease but many unrelated problems are included. Some of the symptoms are found in the physio-kundalini complex surrounding the Awakening of Kundalini. (More information is needed here.)
Wind Illness - p'a leng - wei han zheng
The effected person has a fear of being cold or of the wind. Victims associate this with a unbalance of Yang. The person does things that would keep them warm. ( Another description is needed here The sources available do not list enough symptoms to evaluate this syndrome.) Ethnic Chinese in China and Southeast Asia are effected. This may be an illness rather than a CBS. There is no reference to dissociation or to specific mental events or sudden onset.
Thu, 10 May 2001 13:00:29
-0400
Reply-To:
TCPSYCH - Transcultural Psychiatry Discussion
"In recent years, koro has almost disappeared from the Chinese diaspora in the Malacca Straits and Singapore. "It's almost as if changing social conditions produce changing syndromes," the doctor muses. But it has been replaced by equally strange phenomena. Ng himself has noticed a condition that the Chinese call wei han zheng, or "fear of being cold." Ng calls it frigophobia. Patients bundle up in the steamy Singapore heat, wearing wool hats and gloves. Like koro, he explains, frigophobia seems to stem from Chinese cultural beliefs about the spiritual qualities of heat and cold. "I don't really know," he laughs. "Maybe it's just a reaction to mass air-conditioning. Frigophobia is so new, it doesn't even exist in the psychiatric literature. So far, it's unique to Singapore. I'm as perplexed by it as anyone else. I wonder if it will be in D.S.M.-V."...
http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0105b&L=tcpsych&D=0&P=857
Sub-Groupings of Syndromes
The obvious grouping is of the cold weather events. These happen when two or more people are confined for long periods in small living spaces by cold weather in sub arctic and arctic areas. There would be many opportunities for the subliminal detection of threat movement in those situations.
When one person begins working on anything requiring concentration they can subliminally detect movement of the others in the small room. The activity need not be complicated. Repairing tools or clothes, creating craft articles to pass time all qualify. Reading or daydreaming also qualifies.
It is not obvious that Latah belongs in this group. There is no cold weather in Malaysia. But there entire villages live in longhouses. The same activities done to pass time in cold weather must be done near the windows or doors of longhouses to have sufficient light. Villagers walking in and out those doors and beside that concentrating crafts person would create exposure. Bunkhouse living quarters would have been used in lumber camps in 1880 Maine. That would link Jumping Frenchmen of Maine for both cold weather living quarters and a large group in a one room building. In the Belgian Polar Expedition eighteen men were confined in a small sailing ship for months. With little to do and in extreme cold weather they sat inside for long periods.
A second grouping involves attacks on persons or things. Going Postal, Amok and others are in this group. The Post Office in the United States has never provided Cubicle Level Protection. When exposure happens to someone with an ongoing dispute that dispute is the central focus of the dissociative episode. Peripheral vision reflexes usually happen when movement is detected coming from behind. That constant subliminal input creates a sense of being watched or of something being behind you. That is translated into paranoia. Operant conditioning then acts to raise the perception of the dispute, in the mind of the victim, to a level where violence seems a reasonable path to resolution. Modern Cubicle page.
Sub-Groupings entries have not been written. The five paragraph headings below are the planned sub-groupings..
Jumping Diseases ...
While it is easy to see the connection between Jumping Frenchmen of Maine and Latah because both affected groups lived in single-room arrangements, bunkhouses and longhouses, the conditions for exposure to Subliminal Distraction can happen almost anywhere. The startle behavior is too widespread to be caused by a genetic connection usually seen in a limited population. There have been single cases of the behavior of matching actions and command performance even in factory workers in the United States.
There have been many papers written about the attention seeking of Latahs in Malaysian society. This does happen. But this is a learned behavior or adaptation to the disease not its cause.
Sudden Violent Attacks ...
When the stimulation of movement detection and the brain's subliminal efforts to create a startle or reflex is perceived as reinforcement of contemporaneous activity it shapes thought. Most threat movement detection happens when there is an approach from behind. When we ignore the startle and lose knowledge of the continuing action to warn us, we begin to feel that we are being watched or that there is something behind us. Over many instances of attempted vision reflexes that sensation, subliminally, begins to color thought. This is the source of paranoia.
When the expected mental break happens the victim acts out that psychotically colored belief system with violence.
Depression ...
The incident aboard the Belgica in 1898 points to depression as an outcome from exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Today the belief in psychiatry is that depression is the cause of psychotic episodes. But that incident says that normal people subjected to Subliminal Distraction lose the will to do anything even to eat.
Anxiety ...(Paranoia)
Again, the Belgica incident points to psychotic paranoia as an outcome of exposure to Subliminal Distraction. One man began to hide in small remote parts of the ship to sleep. He thought that the others were plotting to kill him.
Suicides ...
Sub-Groupings will be the Jumping Diseases first then the group including Amok, Going Postal and Iich'aa, and Cabin Fever. The connection is that both groups are caused in similar circumstances and exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Operant conditioning evaluated as the cause of the Jumping Diseases functions to create paranoia, then paranoia colors thought when there is a dispute to create the violent attacks near the point of a mental break. Note that there is no discrete mental break in the Jumping Diseases.
Expanding the explanation of the Syndromes. (unfinished) Some Syndromes are mentioned more than once. Scroll down to the alphabetical location of your search term to double check progress on the page.
Using the definitions discussed here:
Has there ever been a blind victim of a Culture Bound Syndrome?
Is there a Culture Bound Syndrome that only happens to the blind?
Ainu (see see also INU)
The Ainu are a racial minority subgroup in Japan. They are sometimes called the northern people or aborigines of Japan. They are racially separated because they are heavily bearded and have Caucasian features. The one listing from Psychiatric Times, APS page has little information. But if the group is in Arctic or Sub-arctic areas then this would connect Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, and Latah to another ethnic and geographic location.
I found one listing under the name Ainu. There is another listing of Inu among the group Ainu in Japan.
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/22/22-a
Symptoms found so far match some symptoms of JFMD and Latah, hyper-startle, command behaviors, and expressed obscenities.
Alien Abduction Syndrome
These events are not recognized as CBS's. Abduction researchers are not aware of the conflict of physiology and that alien abduction experiences are created in the confusion of a sudden onset dissociative/psychotic episode. (Think of vivid panic attacks as nightmares during the dissociative event.) Abductees are not lying. They had an experience and can pass lie detector testing. Missing time is often cited as proof that an event did happen. But a dissociative mental break causes missing time and either partial or full amnesia of events during the episode.
The seminal case of abduction was Barney and Betty Hill in 1961. Barney was a postal worker. He had been ill for months with stress related complaints. But for the intervention of his doctor and hypnosis, Barney's health would have continued to decline. The incident is reviewed in depth on the Hill Abduction page.
Post
Abduction Syndrome (PAS)
"Post Abduction Syndrome (PAS) (Westrum,
1986) is an anxiety disorder that is closely related to Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder (APA, 1994). It is characterized by the re-experiencing- of abduction
related memories, fragments, or distortions of those memories and is accompanied
by symptoms of increased anxiety and by avoidance of stimuli related to
abduction memories or abduction related events. The affected person may
experience levels of anxiety that interfere with functioning in personal,
occupational, or social areas.
The site has pictures drawn by children of their experiences and an interview with David M. Jacobs, Ph.D. of Temple University.
http://aliensandchildren.org/post_abduction_syn.htm
Stop Alien Abductions
"The thought screen helmet blocks telepathic communication between aliens and humans. Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can't communicate or control humans, they do not take them."
Remember that suggestibility from exposure to subliminal Distraction is evidenced by the command behaviors of Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease and Latah.
http://www.stopabductions.com/
ADD and ADHD
These two class room phenomenon are not considered a CBS. The method of grouping used by the DSM causes this confusion. It has not occurred to the authors of the DSM that the fact that the problem happens only to school children and disappears as they reach adult age makes them CBS's. Compare them to Brain Fag of West Africa. (Recent studies show similar behavior in adults but the disorder continues into adulthood for very very few. For adults, failure to provide Cubicle Level Protection in the workplace is a potential cause.)
In Africa young children are taught in small groups and in less formal situations than in developed countries. Shouting the lessons is one method to expedite learning. There is no concentration involved when they all participate and interact. But these youngsters go on to formal high school and college. Western influence and world aid societies are building school houses in Africa so that the syndromes will appear there also. Too-close side-by-side seating in class rooms copies the too-close unprotected workstations of the 1950's and early 1960's. It will take you a minute of thinking about it to realize this but it is the same.
There are no individual episodes as there are in the exotic CBS's. It is more a problem of constant subliminal distraction. This is evidenced when students cannot concentrate to take exams unless they are isolated.
How does someone outgrow a mental disorder? ADD and ADHD stop in early adult hood because the effected students no longer sit in classrooms.
Answers.Com
This site has a variety of definitions and articles which encompass current beliefs about ADD and ADHD. There is a history page also.
http://www.answers.com/topic/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder
A Thesis posted at Bryn Mawr argues a connection to CBS's for ADD and ADHD but no connection is stated.
http://faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/honors/rob/robdraft3.html
Amafufunyana
Occurring in the Zulux and Xhosas, the syndrome produces hearing voices which victims believe come from their stomach. The voices may speak in different languages or in tongues. Victims exhibit extreme agitation, may break possessions, become extremely tired, lose appetite, speak in tongues, have command hallucinations, disturbed sleep, nightmares, and episodes of angry outbursts . The phenomenon has caused mass episodes where some school children had swollen stomachs attributed to witchcraft.
African tribes use single-room huts as housing. These can be seen on many Internet pages. Those living arrangements allow the detection of movement in peripheral vision when anyone performs activity requiring concentration.
Without instruction in the complexity of the disorders of the DSM the villagers attribute hearing voices to witchcraft. The excerpt from the South African book liked below explains how the potions to cast the spells are made. Each primitive group interprets the onset of a mental break, first psychotic break, in terms of their local ethnicity and belief system. Other belief systems attribute the voices to ancestors speaking to them.
Other mass episodes have occurred in regions of Africa over the years. Religious and ethnic cultural beliefs support these mass occurrences. There is no information available to further evaluate this syndrome but included in the list of symptoms are the same things that happen to other victims on this page.
Excerpt from South African Psychology Text http://www.health24.com/mind/Culturebound_syndromes/1284-1304,13257.asp
Connection to Schizophrenia suspected- Abstract http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=77579
A
Culture-Bound Syndrome 'Amafufunyana' and a Culture-Specific Event 'Ukuthwasa':
Differentiated by a Family History of Schizophrenia and other Psychiatric
Disorders
D.J.H. Niehaus, P. Oosthuizen, C. Lochner, R.A. Emsley, E. Jordaanb,
N.I. Mbanga, N. Keyter, C. Laurent, J.-F. Deleuze, D.J. Stein
Psychopathology 2004;37:59-63 (DOI: 10.1159/000077579)
Abstract:
"The culture-bound syndrome amafufunyana and the culture-specific phenomenon of ukuthwasa are both used to explain symptoms in patients with schizophrenia (DSM-IV). Identification of cases as amafufunyana and ukuthwasa may correlate with a distinction between familial and sporadic cases of schizophrenia. Whether the positive connotations associated with ukuthwasa, as opposed to the more negative connotations associated with amafufunyana, hold any implications for the treatment or prognosis of schizophrenia remains to be clarified."
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=77579#AC
There is no mention of the living or working arrangements of those in this study. But the study was performed in South Africa. It is unlikely that these subjects had modern multi-room housing.
Versola-Russo,
J. (2006).Cultural and Demographic Factors of Schizophrenia.
International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation.
10 (2), 89-103 .
"Niehas et al. (2004) conducted a study in West Africa and found that individuals with a family history of either schizophrenia or other psychiatric disorders were more likely to receive the diagnosis of ukuthwasa (symptoms include social withdrawal, irritability, restlessness, and appearing to respond to auditory hallucinations) than amafufunyana (described as a hysterical condition characterized by people who speak in a strange muffled voice, cannot be understood, and have unpredictable behavior. This state is believed to be induced by sorcery that led to possession by multiple spirits that may then speak through the individual (‘speaking in tongues’). The authors assert that not all individuals with ukuthwasa and amafufunyana suffer from schizophrenia, but may be used as explanatory models in a subset of schizophrenia sufferers. It may be that families prefer the term amafufunyana, possibly due to fewer stigmas associated than a diagnosis of schizophrenia".
http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_10/Cultural_Demographic_Factors_of_Sz_Russo.html
Amok
Amok is defined as a sudden outbreak of violence, Some articles mention that the perpetrator often must be killed to stop the attack. There are cases detailed on-line but they do not show a clear conformation with the symptoms listed for this CBS.
If the person survives the episode they often have amnesia of the events during the episode and delusions of persecution.
Longhouses are used in parts of the range or locations where this disorder happens. See Latah and Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome below for the explanation and links to longhouses.
Sudden violent berserk attacks first appeared as Cabin Fever in the 1830's among mountain men, fur trappers. Two men confined in a tiny cabin, sometimes snowed in for weeks allow the situation to be created that will cause Subliminal Distraction to happen. When either man worked on something at arm's length they could concentrate to maintain focus on the activity. When they do that they slightly dissociate the things happening around them. We all do that every day. This allows peripheral vision to detect movement and attempt a vision reflex. When you are familiar with the situation and stimulus the startle or vision reflex no longer happens. But that does not turn the system off.
When too many threat movement detection incidents happen in a compact time frame a dissociative mental break will be created. If there is an ongoing dispute or the situation creates normal aggravations from close confinement, the constant subliminal perception of threat creates paranoia and over time shapes thought. That subliminal conflict builds until the mental break occurs and the paranoia and fear cause a violent reaction.
Sudden violence appears around the world in Culture Bound Syndromes. Sometimes it is adjunct to other symptoms and in some cases is is the main outcome. See iich'aa, and Going Postal.
An article by George F. Rhoades, Jr., Ph.D.on the ISSD site lists the symptome of amok as:
"...The syndrome has been defined as an episode of dissociation (Suryani & Jensen, 1993) and is often characterized by “a sudden rampage, usually including homicide, ending in exhaustion and amnesia” (Hatta, 1996)...."
Here we have several elements of our template for definition of a CBS, dissociation, sudden violence, amnesia.
Amok would have been first seen in the United States as "Cabin Fever" in the early 1800's. Then it was a sudden violent attack by one fur trapper on another while over-wintering in too-small cabins. Today amok is found around the world. Going Postal and school or workplace mass shootings follow the pattern for amok.
These paragraphs will be expanded...
Anfechtung
Limited to Hutterites, a group of communal ownership colonies, the symptoms include feelings of having sinned, of religions unworthiness, withdrawal from social contacts, and thoughts of suicide.
There are three sub groups (Leuts) within the Hutterite sect and combined they have 383 Colonies in Canada and northern states in the US. Spring Prairie Colony contains 31 families on 3000 acres. They are moving into manufacturing from farming to financially survive.
The word is German and has a general meaning of temptation related to religious beliefs. There is no single word to translate the original meaning.
Hutterites believe that two Bible quotes command communal living. Although families have separate housing group dining halls are used. There are daily church services and longer services on Sundays.
Each colony has business operations to supply needs and perform income producing projects. Computers are only used by Colony managers to facilitate record keeping and the Internet is used to locate and acquire Colony needs.
There is a picture of a school room on the Spring Prairie site. Schooling stops at 15 or 16 and the ninth grade. That site mentions that only one Hutterite there has a four year college degree. Higher education is not sought because of the individual's wishes but done because of the will of the Colony. College degrees are sought because teachers are required to have certification by the state.
The Riverview Colony School site linked below has pictures of the Montessori method school room. There is no too-close side-by-side seating used. This means that school children are not exposed to classroom Subliminal Distraction beyond the ninth grade.
This syndrome is interesting because the Hutterites intermarry and have a limited genetic pool. Statements on their website say that most young people within a individual colony are cousins. Marriage prospects arise from visitation to other colonies.
There is a low incidence of Schizophrenia. I have just found this problem and my investigation is still being done. Understanding why members of this sect have episodes of Anfechtung adds to the understanding of mental illness.
Anfechtung Syndrome points to Accidental Subliminal Operant Conditioning operating to shape the episode from the contemporaneous thought of victims. Paranoia and un-attributed fear evidenced in other cases are limited by the victim's life experience.
Because of the low incidence of schizophrenia there are investigations of genetic connections for mental illness being done using Hutterites as subjects.
40 Mile Colony Montana http://www.uwec.edu/Geography/Ivogeler/w188/articles/hutterites.htm
New Dale Colony Manitoba http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/manitoba/hutteri.htm
Blumengart Colony Manitoba http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/manitoba/hutteri2.htm
Riverview Colony School Uses Montessori method http://sesd.sk.ca/grassroots/riverview/
Spring Prairie Colony http://www.in-forum.com/specials/awa/
Horizon School Division http://www.horizon.ab.ca/virtual/hutcol/colhome.htm
Lomond Colony School http://www.horizon.ab.ca/virtual/hutcol/colhome3.htm
Willow Creek School http://www.willowcreek.prairiespirit.mb.ca/index.htm
Alberta Hutterite Colonies list and dates of founding only. http://members.allstream.net/~blongway/hutter.htm
News articled Hartland Colony Montana http://www.missoulian.com/specials/followh2o/h2o02.html
Low Prevalence of Psychoses Among the Hutterites, an Isolated Religious Community American Journal of Psychiatry 157:1065-1070, July 2000
"CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of specific psychoses was reduced among the Hutterites, although neurotic disorders were more prevalent. These findings suggest some specificity, although possible artifacts such as ascertainment bias must be considered. Further research is needed to examine genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to reduced prevalence of specific psychoses among the Hutterites."
This is an example of research that is unaware of
the "conflict of physiology" explored on this site.
This
journal article used statistical data from insurance and census reports in
Canada and the United States.
American Journal of Psychiatry http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/157/7/1065
(Hutterite colonies have a very low rate of schizophrenia.. See Cause of Psychotic Mental Illness, and Schizophrenia pages.)
to be expanded....
Communal living arrangements are mentioned but not explained in this study.
Low incidence of Schizophrenia http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/157/7/1065
Anorexia Nervosa (This entry will be moved to a separate page as the size increases.)
An eating disease, Anorexia is not considered to be psychotic behavior. But refusing to eat to the point of death is just that. It is a narrowly focused installed belief system. Think of a hypnotic suggestion or operant conditioning taken to extreme.
It is said to be the most prevalent of the disorders of the DSM. It has the highest morbidity rate of any disorder.
Volumes have been written about the media image of thinness in the West being a contributing factor but the writers have a problem jumping from a concern over weight control to the psychosis of Anorexia.
The argument against this etiology begins in the middle ages when the first cases of anorexia were recorded. There was no American media and its drive to be thin. Anorexia appears in many cultures and victims espouse local ethnic reasons for the refusal to eat. Anorexic Chinese women complain of digestive problems as their reason for reduced food intake. Interestingly there are studies that found that women from the middle east did not have fewer symptoms of anorexia than women from the same ethnic background, Iranian, who lived in California, and were exposed to western media.
No one has stated a causative factor for this disorder.
When anorexia is viewed as a installed delusional belief system those differences in etiology disappear.
Each person believes they are reducing food intake for a reason that comes from their cultural experience.
But the actual cause of the delusional thinking is exposure from Subliminal Distraction.
For that explanation we must begin with an activity we know contains stimulus from Subliminal Distraction.
There is a report cited and referenced to political abuse of Falun Gong in China. Users of Qi Gong seem to become addicted to Qi Gong and won't or can't stop gathering others to exercise with them. The subliminal effect that causes addiction, unknown to the user, happens only when the exercise is performed in groups. This should have raised suspicion that the problem was vision driven.
Making the connection between the addiction noted for users of Qi Gong in China and the altered mental state that is Anorexia is difficult to comprehend for the average reader. This report from China establishes that there is something strange at work for users of Qi Gong.
The strange effects of both Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga are well documented. There are reports of users being warned that the exercises will "mess with your mind." But those with that warning don't understand what causes the mental effects noted.
Kundalini Yoga and Qi Gong both create exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction. Some long term users exhibit a psychotic-like belief system in which they profess superhuman strength and supernatural powers. It is called "opening the third eye" in Qi Gong and the "Awakening of Kundalini" in Kundalini Yoga. In both cases it is actually a dissociative mental break, altered mental state, that is achieved slowly. It creates delusional beliefs and thought processing problems that resemble schizophrenia but do not cause the life altering effects of schizophrenia.
The difficult to explain facet is that the psychotic-like altered state is narrowly focused and seems to be limited to the belief system of the exercise. Anorexia is an altered state narrowly focused to include only beliefs that ones body form is inappropriate, regardless of the true physical condition. In other areas of daily life the person functions normally. There is no named psychotic mental disorder for this altered mental state in the DSM.
In Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga the altered mental state and belief system is created by the brain signals, caused by the subliminal detection of threat movement, acting as a stimulus for operant conditioning reinforcing the instructions of the exercise. Users are told that if they continue, to mastery of the exercise, they will reach enlightenment. This includes the ability to levitate through the will of your mind.
This is a unique situation. The detection of threat movement in peripheral vision is a trigger for the human vision startle reflex. The theory on this site is that the brain activity so triggered, occurring below thought, reason, and consciousness, meant to cause that reflex, has a profound effect on psychiatric outcomes. No such effect exists for audio Subliminal Distraction. Audio distraction is thought to have a fatiguing effect for knowledge workers.
For instance, Qi Gong users seeking health improvement are told not to think of a specific cure but instead think of general health improvement. When their subconscious mind understands the stimulus of threat movement detection as reinforcement of that thought they are reinforced to believe their health improves. The human body has recuperative powers if simply left alone. That may be the cause of actual improvement. It also might be a mind body connection for healing.
When you compare the belief systems of Kundalini Yoga to Anorexia there do not seem to be any common points. There aren't any. That is what is confusing when you use the grouping system of the DSM, The substance of the observed behavior does not connect the disorders for most CBS's. Grouping behaviors is dangerous when you do not known the cause. Without correct causation there is no way to determine where one "disorder" ends and another begins.
The connection is in who becomes Anorexic and their activities while the disease develops and progresses. (See BBC news story below.)
Those with Anorexia have activities that subject them to low levels of exposure to Subliminal Distraction.
For the small percent of the population with this disorder their mind made a connection for the stimulus we all have every day. They also experienced a level of exposure that exceeded their threshold of safety. Stress factors may have a role in lowering a person's threshold for serious exposure.
Anorexia is one of a long list of bizarre beliefs. The belief that your body is filled with crawling creatures is another psychotic symptom. With anorexia the victim can actually do something to try to change their body shape, refuse to eat.
What activity causes most exposure in the fourteen and older group of adolescents?
The primary activity is student. That connection is noted in study after study without understanding of the significance.
Too-close side-by-side seating in classrooms provides the basic situation for exposure from Subliminal Distraction if the other elements of the template for exposure are met.
Exposure is prevented in classrooms because in most situations everyone in the classroom does the same things at the same times and there are no students walking too-close beside a concentrating classmate.
The body growth spurt at puberty changes that. Bigger bodies are easier to detect when an arm or leg moves in the adjacent row of students.
The typical onset for Anorexia begins at about fourteen.
Again this is noted in study after study but without understanding of what that means.
Example:
In Kundalini Yoga the acolytes seek a plane of higher existence through meditation. The subliminal stimulation happens while they perform the exercise and their narrowly focused belief set is an outcome. They believe the strange explanation of the seven chakras and expanding your universal life force.
http://www.healer.ch/ChakraRefEnglish.pdf
For anorexia victims the stimulation is achieved in class rooms and the installed belief set, the refusal to eat, is seen as a reasonable method to achieve the goal of changing body form. It is psychotic because when you do not eat you die. They are unaware of the truth of their situation. They experience this belief system as their normal reality.
There are articles which decry the increase of this disorder on college campuses.
An article in the Tuscaloosa News recently recounted the death of a graduate who entered college with prior history of the disorder. The disorder worsened during college.
There are comments on sites for Qi Gong treatments that Anorexia worsens when Qi Gong is used while the eating disorder symptoms are present.
The exposure and stimulation is the same in all these cases.
Anorexia nervosa in Singapore: An eight-year retrospective study
H Y Lee, E L Lee, P Pathy, Y H Chan
"Depression was the most common co-morbid condition affecting 25.4 percent of the sample."
"Prevalence rates for anorexia nervosa
in Japan range from 0.025% to 0.030%, while community studies in China have
found the prevalence to be
0.01%. The prevalence for anorexia nervosa in western countries was found to be
between 0.2% to 0.9%."
http://www.sma.org.sg/smj/4606/4606a1.pdf
Depression can be shown to be a major outcome of exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Ninety-three of one-hundred-fifteen women were students. Too-close side-by-side seating in classrooms provides one of the elements of the template for exposure. The remainder could be considered knowledge workers or high-tech factory workers.
Subliminal Distraction is not considered on factory work floors. But there are scattered instances of jumping diseases briefly mentioned in reports.
Anorexia Following Termination Of Pregnancy And
Laproscopic Sterilization Ajay Velayudhan, T.M. Raghu, B. Sudarshan
& Prabha S. Chandra - Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 2001, 43 (1), 67-69
"Anorexia
Nervosa developing in the postpartum period and in women with young children has
implications for the well being of the mother and the child. In our case, the
patient developed anorectic symptoms during her third abortion and the presence
of eating disorder had significant effects on the health of her children and on
childrearing.
Though our patient had depression, it reached significant severity only for a
period of three months. Hence, the depression could not completely account for
the anorexia. The anorectic
symptoms were also found to be out of proportion to the severity of depression.
Our case is similar to the only
other case reported in literature of anorexia following a termination of
pregnancy (Thomas and Brian,1982)."
"She started feeling progressively weak
and was completely bedridden for eleven months prior to her psychiatric
consultation. She was unable to perform any of her daily chores and her social
and occupational functioning was severely impaired."
http://www.ijponline.org/Jan/indIJPJanAnorexia.html
BBC news story- eating disorders
--Friday, 31 May, 2002, 23:17 GMT 00:17
UK
Television link to eating disorders
"Dr Anne Becker and colleagues from Harvard Medical School found that levels of poor body image and incidents of eating disorders among girls have increased since they were first exposed to television. ...The doctors interviewed and tested two sets of Fijian schoolgirls within a few weeks of the introduction of television to the area of Nadroga in 1995 and then again in 1998. ...The study showed that girls living in houses with a television set were three times more likely to show symptoms of eating disorders."
The photo used for this article was not from Fiji but it showed children sitting watching TV in a group, sitting in each other's peripheral vision. We know from the case of the psychotic episodes that happened with EST that exposure to Subliminal Distraction does happen when groups participate in an activity requiring mental investment and participants can detect movement in their peripheral vision.
The subject of the TV program does not cause the problem but stimulation in peripheral vision while watching the material does. It is Subliminal Accidental Operant Conditioning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2018900.stm
Is Anorexia Nervosa a Culture-Bound Syndrome?
Elizabeth J. McDonald University of
San Diego Journal of Psychological Inquiry
Volume 9, Number 2, Fall 2004
Anorexia actually has its beginning in the middle ages when the feminine ideal body shape was depicted by Renoir's paintings of full figured nudes. Descriptions connected it to sadness and anxiety. Anorexia nervosa was coined in the 1870's.
Arctic Hysteria Pibloktoq, Piblokto
Seizure including loss of consciousness, fleeing, wandering, tearing off clothes and rolling in snow, speaking in tongues and echoing or repeating other's words.
The effected group is the Eskimo of the Arctic.
Note: Repeating the last words of others present in this syndrome is also seen in Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease. It is also a behavior usually only seen in catatonic Schizophrenia.
Year round close confinement in small living spaces would produce Subliminal Distraction exposure. (See Amok and jumping diseases.)
Ataque de nervios
The phrase ataque de Nervios, attack of nerves, is a Spanish idiom. There are so many references it is difficult to separate all of them from the Culture Bound Syndrome.
The phrase is so well known that people often present with the self diagnosis that they have had an "ataque de nervios." The 'wide spread belief' may include simple cases of grief and normal ethnic reaction to stressful events. These have no involvement with a mental break. But the mention of dissociation in the description points to the conflict of physiology.
One of the problems is to find observations or details that would associate this CBS with the conflict of physiology. There is little specific information to link it to Subliminal Distraction but I suspect some of the events that are diagnosed as ataque de nervios should be included in that grouping.
Symptoms include, uncontrolled shouting, crying, trembling, dissociative events or seizures, and fainting. Onset is associated with a stressful family event.
Am J Psychiatry 159:1603-1605, September 2002
Dissociation,
Childhood Trauma, and Ataque De NerviosAmong Puerto Rican Psychiatric
Outpatients -- Roberto Lewis-Fernández, M.D., Pedro Garrido-Castillo, Ph.D.,
Mari Carmen Bennasar, Psy.D., Elsie M. Parrilla, LICSW, Amaro J. Laria, Ph.D.,
Guoguang Ma, M.S., and Eva Petkova, Ph.D.
"OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relationships of dissociation and childhood trauma with ataque de nervios".
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/159/9/1603
Psychiatric Times
"..described by Michael W. Smith, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a principal investigator of the Research Center on the Psychobiology of Ethnicity.
"Ataque de nervios includes a dissociative episode," he said, "one in which patients seem to move out of themselves. Symptoms include palpitations, tight chest, trembling, shortness of breath, problems with memory and striking out at people-which frequently gets the attention of police or forensics." Falling down and convulsing often follow, which can create difficulty in learning whether epilepsy or a psychiatric condition is involved."..."
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p980145.html
Awakening of Kundalini
Acolytes of Kundalini Yoga seek an event they call the Awakening of Kundalini. It is not considered a Culture Bound Syndrome. This is because it is treated as a religious event and belief system. Many sites around the world warn of serious negative mental outcomes from this pursuit of enlightenment.
There is dispute among factions as to the meaning of the awakening. Some claim it is contact with the Goddess Kundalini and other deny this version and say it is a state of higher awareness caused by releasing "Universal Life Energy," which is located at the base of human spines.
It is included here because the method to engage the awakening is the same as the method to achieve health improvements in Qi Gong. In both exercises concentration during eyes-open meditation creates the mental investment to allow the subliminal detection of threat movement. Movement of other participants is detected to create subliminal stimulation of the subconscious during the session. This is the same set of elements that were discovered to cause mental breaks in knowledge workers in the 1960's
When a threshold of exposure is reached, different for each person, a dissociative/psychotic mental break happens. In Qi Gong it is recognized as such but in Kundalini Yoga it is accepted as a desired outcome.
Long term Kundalini Yoga users exhibit a severely altered psychotic mental state. They believe they can levitate, dematerialize, become invisible, walk through solid objects without harm, and that they possess superhuman or supernatural powers. You can read letters from those experiencing this phenomenon on-line.
Victims with these mental states function normally within their community of common belief set and are revered as enlightened. This is different from the complete recovery usually seen in CBS's. The difference in the amount of exposure from the two exercises accounts for the outcomes. The low level but persistent exposure causes that.
The disorganized thinking, hearing voices (sounds of running water, birds chirping, clicks and pops) and bizarre beliefs that contradict reality are similar to Schizophrenia.
Anxiety and Panic Attacks (there is a second panic attacks entry below about my own experience.)
Many CBS's include anxiety in their description of symptoms. One paper given as an introductory speech to a convention of the American Psychiatric Association, cited that anxiety and panic co-occur in mental disorders in a frequency that is too high for random chance. The speaker made the observation but had no thought as to why this is so. Symptoms of a Kundalini Awakening also include fear and trembling. One mass shooter, Mark Barton Atlanta Day Trader shooter, left notes that describe un-attributed fear. That is, intense, unbearable fear but with no specific object of that fear. This fear also appeared in the Mary Shotwell Little disappearance, Atlanta 1965.
These examples of perceived but un-attributed fear happen to people who by the description of the events have been exposed to Subliminal Distraction.
This does not suggest that anxiety and panic attacks should be considered Culture Bound Syndromes. Rather it points to a continuum of experience which runs through the CBS's. Panic is experienced by victims and recorded by observers as agitation, being keyed up, in increasing levels, which include the suggestion that Oriental Nightmare Death is a severe panic attack that causes heart attacks.
(I am still working on this aspect and will add material here ....)The Little Disappearance page Mark Barton Day Trader Shooting
As you read through this list note the number of times anxiety appears in the list of symptoms.
Adobe file, a reprint of Journal Article http://www.chmeds.ac.nz/research/chds/publications/2003/panic.pdf
The symptoms of Anxiety and Panic Attacks are often included in the symptoms of Culture Bound Syndromes. Sites on Panic Attacks say that the onset is in late teen years or early adulthood. The reason given is often stress in dealing with life situations and changes. But that time period for normal onset is also the time period for the onset of Schizophrenia. (See the Schizophrenia entry below or link to the Cause of Schizophrenia VPN site page.)
Bangungut
I have not found articles on this syndrome yet but this PubMed paper suggests that the phenomenon is genetic and occurs in Southease Asian groups.
"A case-control study in Ban Vinai revealed associations between sudden death in sleep and membership in the Green-Hmong subgroup, a family history of sudden death, and previous non-fatal sleep disturbances."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3618851&dopt=Abstract
Spiritual Death
This article has case histories of sudden death other that from Southeast Asia.
http://www.mind-body.info/Contents/IMAGINATION/DEATH/SPIRITUAL/SUDS/Spiritual.html
Baridi
The syndrome is confined to three villages in southern Tanzania. One village has a population of about 5,000 and many have primary schooling. (See Brain Fog below.)
There is a progressive feeling of tiredness and emotional detachment that causes physical, mental, and social decline. An article from the Transcultural Journal of Nursing has detailed cultural information.
There is no evidence of sudden dissociative episodes, no sudden event that has a recovery with no treatment. The quote below does reference "madness." as being a long term outcome. Deformation of joints in advanced cases tends toward a virus or other vector as one possible cause of the syndrome. There is the possibility that many complaints are combined and blamed on Baridi. The symptoms other than the joint deformation might be low lev