Psychogenic death is a terrible condition that occurs when a person refuses to live. It is important to note that this is not suicide and the condition itself has nothing to do with depression. Basically, it is the act of giving up life, which usually occurs over a period of days or weeks and is a real condition. Scientists believe that psychogenic death is often associated with severe trauma. So, there are cases when people died after three days or three weeks after a serious trauma that made them radically reconsider their desire to live. To the general public, this syndrome is known as "voodoo death", as it was often observed in some tribes where people believed that they were cursed. Today, scientists distinguish five stages that accompany psychogenic death, and in 2018 the world's first study of this phenomenon was published. According to the results obtained,being in a state of psychogenic death, a person perceives the desire to die as a rational act. But how is this possible? Is it really possible to die simply by losing the will to live?
It turns out you can. At least this is the conclusion reached by scientists from the University of Portsmouth in the UK in a study according to the results of which, severe trauma can lead to disruption of the anterior cingulate cortex in some people. As the lead author of the study explained in an interview with Big Think, motivation for life is necessary to cope with life's difficulties, but if this fails, apathy is almost inevitable.
However, even if you are in a state of psychogenic death, you do not have to die: for example, physical activity can give a person a feeling of being restored to choice and control over what is happening and can help break the terrible cycle that can lead to death. All because of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of reward and pleasure that is produced during exercise.
Psychogenic death was first described in 1942 by psychologist Walter Cannon of Harvard University, who noticed that this condition was often caused by fear of supernatural forces due to violated generally accepted rules. So, people who were cursed, and especially in front of everyone - for this the shaman had only to wave a wand - often really died within a few days. Cannon believed that the victim could not determine the classic response of the body to danger - fight or flight, which led to death. It is important to note that psychogenic death syndrome is not recognized by some scientists.
Voodoo death stages
Dr. Leach has identified five stages of progressive psychological decline that leads to death:
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- Social withdrawal usually follows an emotional shock, due to which a person thinks that there is no reasonable way out of the current situation. This very passive state is characterized by withdrawal from social interaction, insensitivity, indifference and self-centeredness. Very often this condition is observed in former prisoners of war immediately after capture. If you do not act, then death occurs on average three weeks after the first stage, but it can occur earlier.
- Apathy - a person in this state suffers from severe melancholy and lack of energy. He no longer cares about self-preservation and instead plunges into deep demoralizing melancholy - a morbidly oppressed state, blues.
- Abulia occurs when a person not only lacks motivation, but there is practically no emotional reaction, and to such an extent that there is no desire to talk. A person who is in a state of psychogenic death becomes extremely withdrawn, does not want to help himself and other people.
- Mental akinesia - this state is achieved when a person is conscious, but is in such deep apathy that even severe pain, as from a blow, will not cause any reaction. A person in mental akinesia not only does not wash, but often simply lies in his own waste, the researchers found.
- In the final stage, psychogenic death includes a complete rejection of life. It is believed that those who have reached this stage can lie in their own excrement and nothing - neither talking, nor using force, nor pleading will make a person want to live. As you know, when prisoners in concentration camps reached the final stage, they took out a hidden cigarette to smoke. Because cigarettes were extremely valuable and could be exchanged for food, the person who smoked was viewed as one who had actually given up. Death usually occurred within a few days.
Lyubov Sokovikova