Culture Bound Syndromes

Culture Bound Syndromes

Culture Bound Syndromes
As many of us know, there are unlimited differences in cultures around the world from religion to the way we communicate with one another.   What many people do not   know, however, is that there are actually specific psychological disorders found only in certain areas of the world.   There are several well known culture-bound disorders as well as variances in disorders and on theoretical reasons behind the disorders themselves that will be discussed throughout.
To be clear, not all of the strange things people do all over the world are disorders nor are culture-bound syndromes limited to any one region.   Anorexia/bulimia nervosa, for example, is a disorder found in the west but not in Third World countries.   This could be due to the differences in emphasis the cultures put on thinness of women in the media or feelings of a need to be in control (Matsumoto, 1994).   Just north of the U.S., there are the Algonquin Indians
Culture Bound Syndrome (CBS) is defined by the DSM-IV as recurrent, locally specific patterns of deviant behavior and troubling experience that may or may not be linked to a particular DSM-IV diagnostic category.   Such patterns of behavior are indigenously considered to be an "illness" or at least an affliction, and most have names specific to the region or culture in which they originate.   Many CBSs are not literally syndromes; they are more like ways of explaining any of a wide array of misfortunes.   In the following pages I will attempt to explain the CBS known as windigo.   Over the course of the following pages I will attempt to describe the various types of windigo stemming from the folklore of the cannibalistic spirit.
In accordance with knowledge that has been collected relating to windigo, it seems that there are three different classifications of windigo.   The first classification is that of an evil spirit that haunts the sub artic forests of eastern

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