Grisi Siknis: Dis(possession), vulnerability and the politics of illness in the Nicaraguan Miskitu Coast
In the past decade, mental health research has been marked by a growing recognition of the broader social and environmental contexts in which individuals are embedded and how these factors shape individual risks and health. This paper explores, Grisi Siknis, a contagious Miskitu illness that results from demonic possession and its mental health implications. Grisi Siknis, popular known as culture-Bound Syndrome in the psychiatric literature, is characterized by numerous psychosomatic symptoms, such as aggressive behavior, loss of consciousness and periods of rapid frenzy and it affects predominantly women. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Nicaragua, this paper examines the ways that local categories and idioms of distress associated with the experience of Grisi Siknis reveal how communities and individuals make sense of their suffering in a context that essentializes and politicizes this experience. Analyses of case studies show that the cultural and medical redefinitions of Grisi Siknis exclude the emotional and physical vulnerabilities associated with the experience. The illness narratives presented in this paper point towards specific vulnerabilities and markers of risk among the victims of this syndrome that had been previously ignored. This paper contributes studies of mental health and anthropology by rethinking vulnerability from the embodied experience of illness and by revealing practices and ideologies that encode structures of social relations, power and sources of power that alienate suffering an experience.
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