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January 28, 2020
“Viewing those with mental disorders as diseased sets them apart and may lead to our perceiving them as physically distinct. Biochemical
Beliefs about mental illness—and this is as true in the United States as it is in Zanzibar—are first and foremost testaments to group membership.
view the ill person as “almost a different species.”
McGruder and her husband lived alone and had no close kinship groups on which they could rely.
McGruder and her husband had no such ambient, pervasive faith to rely on, and, not surprisingly, the Christian beliefs McGruder and her husband belatedly tried to adopt proved to be of little comfort.
“Once you start looking at a loved one through the lens of a Western psychiatric diagnosis,” McGruder said, “it is really hard to stop.”
They were there to learn.
More precisely, they wouldn’t want to accept the disease. “The
the Japanese had a fundamentally different conception of depression than in the West,
they were learning how to market a disease.
GlaxoSmithKline needed help solving a cultural puzzle that might be worth billions of dollars.
Critically, not everyone in the world agreed that thinking of such experiences as an illness made sense. Kirmayer
By applying a one-size-fits-all notion of depression around the world, Kirmayer argued, we run the risk of obscuring the social meaning and response the experience might be indicating.
cultural psychiatrists sometimes end up being handmaidens to these global marketing machines that are intent on manipulating cultural differences… in order to capitalize on those changes.”
idea that it was a common illness and that antidepressants bring the brain’s natural chemistry back into balance.
“drugs that can transform minus thinking into plus thinking” and that “can help a person live tough,” like financially successful Americans.
kokoro no kaze: the metaphor lacked a sense of urgency about the condition.
Without medical attention, the message went, this “cold of the soul” could kill you.
If it was unrealistic social demands that were the cause of distress in the population, why should the individual be taking the pills?
coherence of these various messages took second place to their effectiveness.
science. These drugs, which were said to rebalance the natural chemicals in the brain, would bring Japan up to date.
They styled themselves as people fighting depression, anxiety, and social phobia—diseases that remained cruelly untreated in Japan and elsewhere.
Applbaum could see that this mixture of moral certainty and the lure of billions of dollars in potential profits was a potent force.
