Another way you could do this is to set up an afflictions table, then manipulate the values in the table.
If you set up the table like this:
afflictions = {Sadness = 0,
Dementia = 0,
Hallucinations = 0,
Confusion = 0,
Paranoia = 0,
Hypersomnia = 0,
Hatred = 0,
Blood_curse = 0,}
Then you could set up your function to do:
for k,v in pairs(afflictions) do
afflictions[v] = 0
end
This steps through your table and sets the values to zero.
Since lua puts everything into a table anyway, I figure why not use that to your advantage.
In order to set an affliction, simply set the affliction.Sadness or whatever to 1.
It's actually quite handy once you get used to it. Then, if you want to check on everything at once, just display(afflictions) and it will show the table.
HTH