AMOK

 Syndrome indigenous to the Malayo-Indonesian

cultural region.

 Men of Malay extraction.

Muslim religion, low education, and rural origin.
Between the ages of 20 and 45

 Precipitants - include arguments with coworkers,

nonspecific family tensions, feelings of social
humiliation, bouts of possessive jealousy, gambling
debts, and job loss.
History
 derived from the Malay word mengamok, which means to make a
furious and desperate charge.
 According to Malay mythology, running amok was an involuntary
behavior caused by the “hantu belian,” or evil tiger spirit entering a
person's body and compelling him or her to behave violently without
conscious awareness.
 Captain Cook is credited with making the first outside observations and
recordings of amok in the Malay tribesmen in 1770 during his around-
the-world voyage. He described the affected individuals as behaving
violently without apparent cause and indiscriminately killing or maiming
villagers and animals in a frenzied attack.
 Today, amok should be viewed as one possible outcome of an
individual's undiagnosed and/or untreated psychiatric condition with
psychosis or severe personality pathology.
1. Exposure to a stressful stimulus or subacute
conflict ( recent loss / depression )
2. Feelings of anger, loss, shame, and lowered
self-esteem
3. A period of social withdrawal
4. Transition
5. Indiscriminate selection of victims
6. Cessation
7. Subsequent partial or total amnesia
8. Perceptual disturbances or affective
decompensations
 Treatment –
• Afflicted individuals in 20th-century Malaysia have been exempted
from legal or moral responsibility for acts committed while in a state
of amok by means of a kind of “insanity defense,” which
characterizes the attack as “unconscious” and beyond the
subject’s control.
• amok represents an extreme form of violent behavior occurring as
a result of a mental disorder, personality pathology, and
psychosocial stressors. Early recognition of the risk factors for amok
and prompt treatment of the underlying psychiatric condition or
personality disorder offer the best chance of preventing it.

• Subsequently hospitalized, frequently received diagnoses of

schizophrenia and were treated with antipsychotic medication.
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