Paper Title
Sleeping Sickness in Kalachi Village
Abstract
The present study investigated the emotional state of patients suffering from sleeping sickness and their general psychological condition.In 2013, the residents of Kalachi, a small village of about 640 people in Kazakhstan, faced a mysterious illness in which they could not stop falling asleep.A group of psychologists from Kazakhstan investigated the emotional state of patients suffering from this disorder and their general psychological condition. The purpose of the study was to report the emotional state and generalpsychological condition of patients experienced sleeping sickness at least once. Sixty residents (M=25, F=35) participated in the present study. Over a third showed a low level of emotional expression, which probably indicated that they avoided remembering emotional experiences of last year; also over a third showed emotionality in middle range, and the rest had a high level of emotional expressionIn addition, 14 % suffered from high blood pressure, which might be related to regular headache experienced by almost 94 %; 93 % had severe fatigue; 60% replied affirmatively to the question “Do you see dreams?”. Some of them (34%) had dreams occasionally; 24 % could not recall any dreams and 18 % suffered from insomnia. In addition to physical fatigue, respondents also suffered from psychological fatigue: 24 % indicated that they experienced a high level of stress, 14 % claimed that they had pain on their arms and legs Sleeping sickness is a distressing disorder for the residents of Kalachi, the etiology of which is still unclear. More research is needed to help psychologists, ecologists, biochemist and other scientists [2] understand the risk factors associated with and who would be prone to it.