Evil Spirit Sickness, the Christian disease: the innovation of a new syndrome of mental derangement and redemption in Papua New Guinea.

This essay analyses the cultural and historical processes involved in the emergence of Evil Spirit Sickness, a form of mental or behavioral derangement that appeared among the Bosavi people of Papua New Guinea during a period of intense Christian evangelization and religious excitement. It explores the emergence of the disorder both as a form of psychological breakdown under the burden of intolerable life stress and a socially innovated, ritually structured, and performatively achieved mode of seeking redemption in a Papuan Christian context.