Extreme Cabin Fever in Culture-Based Disorders - Plubukto in Esquimaux Coping Skills

The People of the North, the indigenous populations that inscribe the Artic Circle with their relatedness by blood and deed, do not always well tolerate their extreme living conditions.

Because some of them live in unheated villages, warmed only by fires, furs, and friendly sled dogs and other working hounds, other peoples wonder at their ability to survive and even to thrive.

In fact, some other nations fear the People of the North. At times, the local temperature drops to -75 degrees F in Arctic villages, and these people do not die. They live. However, some of the individual coping styles manifest during this survival have in the past been labeled at worst, a deadly type of psychosis and at least, mental illness .

I have heard of very few cases of this coping style in which the individual "snaps" (in popular language) and tries to escape confinement and the climate by running, unfettered by anything. However, in my studies of indigenous peoples, I have been told firsthandof a few actual occurences, all with unhappy endings.

During my last three winters in which there were weeks of incredibly harsh conditions, I have come to understand more about the mental health issue once designated as Plubukto, at least as recent as 20 years ago in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM.(a manual for diagnosis) of the time. The term and condition have been eliminated since that era; at least I cannot find it.

However, plubukto was described as an Eskimo or Native Alaskan sort of extreme cabin fever. It was deemed a psychosis, what we call an SMD (severe mental disorder). I cannot recall all of the possible sumptoms, but these stand out in memory:

The constant 6 months of heavy clothing 24 hours a day, cramped living quarters in igloos or wooden/animal skin huts with dogs and any family, and 6 months of darkness at the top of the globe affected some Eskimos and other northern peoples with plubukto. At some threshold of disturbing impact of combined such simuli, the Arctic person would arise, screaming, and dash outside into the harsh, cold environment. He would rip off all of his clothing and run off and most often, die. He may have been hallucinating.

Hallucination is a possibility, given the hallucinations that sensory deprivation experimentts of the 1950s and 1960s US Space Program research deep space readiness revealed. Even Walt Disney Presents showed them on TV. The effects of sensory depreiation or of constant irritation - like that of waterboarding (Asian water torture) - can drive one "mad as a hatter" (Lewis Carroll). Either extreme - constant non-stimulation or constant stimulation - can cause hallucinations, psychosis, or surrender. The Actics sometomes surrendered to plubukto. I understand...

During my last three winters, there have been in each a two-week period of time in which I feel that I could have done just this sort of behavior to escape, although it would be a permanent escape from life. Thankfully, this style of coping, this final reaction to over-confinement, was not neccessary. The weather warmed up suddenly and considerable after two weeks' time. Thus, I keep in mind that rise and fall, the rythym of nature, the good following the bad following the good...and I am at peace. Things will either get better or worse and at some threshhold point I will take action calmly.

Whern you suffer cabin fever, please take action before it progresses to Plubukto  -- The medics may not know what it is.