Wendigo psychosis
A culture-bound syndrome documented in Algonquian communities of the subarctic — an obsessive belief that one is transforming into a Wendigo, accompanied by a craving for human flesh.
Definition
Cases of what would later be called Wendigo psychosis were recorded by European missionaries and traders in northern Algonquian communities as early as the 17th century. The affected individual would describe an intense, compulsive craving for human flesh despite having access to other food, alongside the conviction that they were becoming something else — something that no longer belonged to the community.
In many traditional accounts, the affected person asked to be killed before the transformation completed. The most-cited case is that of Swift Runner, hanged at Fort Saskatchewan in 1879 for cannibalising his family during a brutal winter, twenty-five miles from a stocked food post. He maintained throughout that the spirit of a Wendigo had entered him through dreams.
Modern psychiatry treats Wendigo psychosis as a culture-bound syndrome — a disorder whose presentation is shaped by the cultural framework in which it occurs. That framing is not the only valid one. The framework itself predates psychiatry by many centuries and was developed by people who had to live with it.
See The Wendigo for the full account.