Research shows that people who lose the will to live can die in days

People can die within three weeks simply because they give up on life, scientist believe. 

 

Dr John Leach at the University of Portsmouth studies the condition known as "psychogenic death" and states in a new review that the condition has five stages. 

 

"Psychogenic death is real," said Dr Leach. "It isn't suicide, it isn't linked to depression, but the act of giving up on life and dying usually within days is a very real condition often linked to ¬severe trauma."

 

The condition is also known as "give up-itis" and normally follows an emotional shock from which the person believes there is no mental escape. If not stopped, death could occur three weeks after the first stage of withdrawal. However, scientists have as yet been reluctant to accept this syndrome. 

 

 "Psychogenic death is real," said Dr Leach. "It isn't suicide, it isn't linked to depression, but the act of giving up on life and dying usually within days is a very real condition often linked to ¬severe trauma."

 

Psychogenic death, also known as voodoo death, was first defined in 1942 by Harvard psychologist Walter Cannon, who noticed that it could often be triggered by the fear of supernatural consequences of breaking taboos.

Cannon also termed the "fight or flight" response and believed, in psychogenic death, that the flight response took over but the sufferer could not act on it, leading to a fatal chain of events.

 

Dr Leach found after studying case reports from concentration camps inmates and shipwreck survivors, that the first stage is social withdrawal in which sufferers exhibit lack of emotion, listlessness and indifference and become self-absorbed.

Next a deep apathy sets in where a person no longer cares about self-¬preservation and instead sinks into a deep, demoralising melancholy.

 

The third phase is "aboulia", in which people stop speaking and give up eating and washing, which leads to stage four, psychic akinesia, where they no longer feel even extreme pain.

 

Dr Leach said: "An interesting thing about aboulia is there appears to be an empty mind or a consciousness devoid of content. People at this stage who recovered describe it as having a mind like mush, or of having no thought whatsoever. In aboulia, the mind is on standby and a person has lost the drive for goal-directed behaviour."

 

The final stage is death.

Dr Leach said: "Motivation is essential for coping with life and if that fails, apathy is almost inevitable."

"Reversing the give-up-itis slide ¬towards death tends to come when a survivor finds or recovers a sense of choice, of having some control."

 

The research was published in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

 

For legal advice contact our specialist team of solicitors on 0800 810 1010