Ghost sickness is a culture-bound syndrome which some Native American tribes believe to be caused by association with the dead or dying. It is considered to be a psychotic disorder of Navajo origin. Its symptoms include general weakness, loss of appetite, a feeling of suffocation, recurring nightmares, and a pervasive feeling of terror. The sickness is attributed to ghosts (chindi) or, occasionally, to witches or witchcraft. It is sometimes associated with a coffin linked to the common Native Americans practice of burying the dead above ground.
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The sufferer may be mildly obsessed with death or a deceased person whom they believe to be the source of their affliction. Physical symptoms can include weakness and fatigue, diminished appetite, or other digestion problems. There may be dizziness or fainting, and sometimes even loss of consciousness. At times the sufferer might experience a sense of suffocation or the inability to breathe. Psychological symptoms may include nightmares or other sleep disturbances, anxiety, a sense of being in danger, hallucinations, and confusion. At some stages there can be feelings of despondency or depression.[1]
The Native American world-view is more cyclical in nature than typically linear world-view of most Western societies, which view the world as cause and effect, with events happening linearly, i.e., one after the other. Native Americans have what the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) term a relational world-view that is more cyclical in nature. It is not oriented in time, but instead believes that all events affect each other, regardless of when the event occurs—past, present or future.
With this world view in mind, ghost sickness can be understood more clearly. By not practising certain burial and mourning rituals, the deceased is unable to be at peace on their new spiritual plane. Due to this, the deceased causes physical and mental problems for the living, who in turn, by having not practised the rituals and subsequently suffering ghost sickness, causes the inability for the deceased to be at peace.[2]
In the Muscogee (Creek) culture, it is believed that everyone is a part of an energy called Ibofanga. This energy supposedly results from the flow between mind, body, and spirit. Illness can result from this flow being disrupted. Therefore "Indian medicine is used to prevent or treat an obstruction and restore the peaceful flow of energy within a person".[3] Purification rituals for mourning "focus on preventing unnatural or prolonged emotional and physical drain.[3]
The grief resolution process is qualitatively different for Native Americans than for Western cultures. In 1881, there was a federal ban on some of the traditional mourning rituals practised by the Lakota and other tribes. Lakota expert Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart proposes that the loss of these rituals may have caused the Lakota to be "further predisposed to the development of pathological grief". Some manifestations of unresolved grief include seeking visions of the spirits of deceased relatives, obsessive reminiscing about the deceased, longing for and believing in a reunion with the deceased, fantasies of reappearance of the deceased, and belief in one's ability to project oneself to the past or to the future.[4]
A common belief among the Kwakiuti Indians of British Columbia is that a child's soul is weaker or less attached to their body than that of an adult. This would make children more vulnerable than adults to ghost sickness. In this society the children are commonly referred to as adults in order to protect their souls and mislead the ghosts.[5]
Ghost sickness may be brought about from the belief that the dead may try to take someone with them. Putsch states that "Spirits or 'ghosts' may be viewed as being directly or indirectly linked to the cause of an event, accident, or illness".[6] Both Erikson and Macgregor report substantiating evidence of trauma response in ghost sickness, with features including withdrawal and psychic numbing, anxiety and hypervigilance, guilt, identification with ancestral pain and death, and chronic sadness and depression.[7][8][9]
Somatization is another manifestation of unresolved grief for Native Americans.[10] Somatization, also known as Briquet's syndrome, is a chronic condition with numerous physical complaints most commonly involving the digestive system, nervous system, and chronic pain. Physicians are unable to find an underlying physical cause for the patient's symptoms, which can persist for years and be severe enough to interfere with employment and personal relationships.[11]
Another possible manifestation of unresolved grief for Native Americans is the high rate of suicide amongst some tribes. This can be seen as an increase in self-destructive behaviors brought about by the inability to process grief through traditional rituals.[12] High suicide rates can also be a manifestation of an obsession with the dead in which the sufferer may have an unconscious wish to join their deceased loved one.[13][14][15]
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