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North American people associated with ghost sickness include the Navajo and some Muscogee and Plains cultures. 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.
Navajo Indians utilize approximately 450 species for medicinal purposes, the most plant species of any native tribe. Herbs for healing ceremonies are collected by a medicine man accompanied by an apprentice. Patients can also collect these plants for treatment of minor illnesses.
The DSM-IV-TR Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes includes the following disorders specific to Native Americans (ordered here by decreasing frequency of diagnostic [11]]): [3] susto, “fright” or “soul loss”; dissociative trance disorder; spirit possession; mental illness due to witchcraft; ghost sickness; iich’aa and piblotoq.
After death, a person's ghost would normally travel to the sky world or the underworld, but some could stay on earth. In many Polynesian legends, ghosts were often involved in the affairs of the living. Ghosts might also cause sickness or even invade the body of ordinary people, to be driven out through strong medicines. [1]
recognition and treatment by the folk medicine of the culture; Some culture-specific syndromes involve somatic symptoms (pain or disturbed function of a body part), while others are purely behavioral. Some culture-bound syndromes appear with similar features in several cultures, but with locally specific traits, such as penis panics.
Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260 ...
Sanapia, born Mary Poafpybitty (ca. 20 May 1895 [2] –23 January 1984 [3]), was a Comanche medicine woman and spiritual healer. She is believed to be the last of eagle doctors, a Comanche title referring to a person with eagle medicine for healing the sick.
After a childhood friend fatally OD’d in Hamm’s bedroom, Hamm spiraled downward. He slept under a bridge and at a homeless drop-in center and tried killing himself several times with an overdose of heroin and Xanax. He began thinking of himself as a ghost. There were attempts at treatment, as well, all ending in relapse.