Cultural Idioms of Distress as an Example of the Social Distribution of Health – The Case of Javanese Ngamuk

Abstrakt

The aim of this article is to look at the phenomenon of the social distribution of health in terms of differences in the relative perception of diseases, including their symptoms. The author presents this phenomenon using the example of ngamuk illness. It is considered to be characteristic of Javanese culture, similar to amok, characterised by extreme physical aggression (including homicide). The empirical basis for this article is the results of an ethnographic field study conducted in the grounded theory strand in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2019–2020. The data come from 31 individual in-depth, semi-structured interviews on the cultural image of mental illnesses. Western medical practitioners, traditional healers and students participated in the interviews. What emerges from the Indonesians’ statements is the social image of largely the mentally ill person as one who displays aggressive behaviour towards others, including murder. The results indicate that although none of the interviewees used the word ngamuk when describing mental illness, the symptoms cited were close to the symptomatology of the disorder. Juxtaposing the results with other studies in the field of cultural perceptions of illness, the author concludes that the social perception of mental illnesses is strongly culturally-relativised. This also means that the view of illnesses is socially distributed, as exemplified by ngamuk.