The Aboriginal group under consideration has complex marriage customs, including a high degree of polygyny. Today, many of the roles within the polygynous family have been made redundant by the introduction of a cash economy. This loss of traditional roles within the family is associated with many cases of psychiatric illness causing moderate or severe social dysfunction. In this preliminary report, no use was made of a matched control group.
A similar psychosocial sequence surrounds cases of voodoo death and cases where dying is expedited. Predeath obsequies and fatalism in the victim are common to both. The death mechanism in both is dehydration by confiscation offluids. Intervention in two voodoo death sequences involved rehydrating the victim. As medical services extend to remote Aborigines, deaths with prominent psychosocial components that resemble voodoo death become diagnosable as orthodox medical conditions. [voodoo death, Australian Aboriginals, dehydration] PIONEER ARNHEM ANTHROPOLOGIST W. Lloyd Warner, working with the "Murngin" people in and around Milingimbi Mission in 1926-29, thought that social practices involving direct suggestion caused certain deaths. In A Black Civilization he describes this sequence:. . . the attitude is taken that the man is "half-dead'' and will shortly die. The effect on a suggestible individual . . . is sufficient to set up certain psychophysiological reactions which tend to destroy him. Pressure is then applied through the mortuary rites which perform the function of attempting to remove him from the society of the living to that of the dead, further destroying his desire to live and frequently bringing about his ultimate death. [1958:9]
The recorded causes of all deaths among the Yolngu group of Aborigines for a 30‐year period show only two cases of suicide. This confirms the low incidence that has been noted in other Aboriginal communities where the traditional values remain strong.
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