Amok syndrome

Amok syndrome is a dissociative behavioural pattern that originated in the Malay world and gave English the phrase running amok. The name comes from the Malay word amuk, traditionally meaning rushing in a frenzy or attacking furiously. An episode presents as a sudden mass assault on people or objects that follows a period of brooding. It was long treated as occurring specifically in Malay culture, but it is now increasingly viewed as a more general psychopathological behaviour. The syndrome appears in the fourth edition text revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The fifth edition no longer counts it as a culture-bound syndrome, because that category was removed.