[2] Purification rituals for mourning "focus on preventing unnatural or prolonged emotional and physical drain.
"[2] The traditional Native American grief resolution process is qualitatively different from those usually seen in mainstream Western cultures.
Putsch states that "Spirits or 'ghosts' may be viewed as being directly or indirectly linked to the cause of an event, accident, or illness".
[4] Both Erikson and Macgregor report substantiating evidence of psychological trauma response in ghost sickness, with features including withdrawal and psychic numbing, anxiety and hypervigilance, guilt, identification with ancestral pain and death, and chronic sadness and depression.
[5][6][7] Religious leaders within the Navajo tribe repeatedly perform ceremonies to eliminate the all-consuming thoughts of the dead.