A very interesting book I read recently was 'Crazy Like Us' by Ethan Watters. It shows how the West (particularly the US) is 'exporting' its mental illnesses to other countries. Of course mental illness is common to all cultures, but it is expressed in very different ways depending upon cultural influences. By homogenising the symptoms, diagnoses and treatments, the West is pushing its own influences and disregarding those of each culture, partly to make money (e.g. sell anti-depressants in Japan) and partly out of naively wanting to help (e.g. assuming that eastern countries won't be able to cope after a traumatic event, despite the fact that humanity has been successfully surviving trauma for generations and these cultures have their own way of coping such as religion and family - things that the west has lost to a large extent). The worst thing about this is that many other cultures have successful ways of coping with mental illness, which are being lost in the rush to sell them our, often completely useless methods. Further, we risk traumatising them more by making out the trauma/illness to be something terrible that must be minimised/cured, rather than accepting it as part of normal life.
26 Jun 2011, 12:40 pm
