Grisi siknis outbreak, Puerto Cabezas
In March 2009 many students, mostly girls, at schools in Puerto Cabezas (Bilwi) and Siuna on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast fell into episodes of grisi siknis, the Miskito 'crazy sickness'.
2009 CE · 14.03, -83.39 · status: disputed
The account
Sufferers report being visited by dark spirits, then run, fight or faint, sometimes in chains of cases. Miskito people blamed sorcerers seeking payment for cures. Anthropologist Philip Dennis documented it in 1981; it is treated in medicine as a culture-bound syndrome.
The sceptical view
Nicaraguan scholars linked the 2009 wave to stress and poverty after Hurricane Felix in 2007; outbreaks resemble mass psychogenic illness elsewhere.
The researched reading
A real outbreak of trance and agitation shaped by Miskito belief and community stress. It is a recognised form of mass psychogenic illness.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 50% | The outbreaks spread person to person, mostly among adolescent girls, in a community under stress after Hurricane Felix. This is the pattern of mass psychogenic illness, and dissociative trance is a recognised response. |
| A cultural story | 33% | Grisi siknis is a culture-bound syndrome: Miskito beliefs about spirits and sorcery supply the script that sufferers follow and that healers treat. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | Some individuals may have epilepsy or other medical conditions mixed into the outbreak. |
| Something in the surroundings | 3% | No toxin was identified, but such outbreaks are routinely checked for one. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 3% | There is no evidence of deliberate faking, though in any outbreak some may imitate others. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 3% | Explained well by known psychology and culture. |
| Undetermined | 2% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
Official position: Health authorities treated it as an outbreak of a culture-bound syndrome; local belief blamed sorcery.