- Image by kool_skatkat via Flickr
By Richard Reeve
In a fascinating article on the surprising spread of mental illness around the world, or at least the recognizable diagnosis of different conditions around the world, researchers are now questioning the deeper effects of globalization on different cultures.
These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. In some Southeast Asian cultures, men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia; men in the region also suffer from koro, which is characterized by the debilitating certainty that their genitals are retracting into their bodies. Across the fertile crescent of the Middle East there is zar, a condition related to spirit-possession beliefs that brings forth dissociative episodes of laughing, shouting and singing.” Ethan Watters, The Americanization of Mental Illness, The New York Times, January 8, 2010.
Researchers are finding a surprising increase in the spread of western ailments into previously culturally isolated areas. Further into the article the crux of the situation gets expressed as follows:
“What is being missed, Lee and others have suggested, is a deep understanding of how the expectations and beliefs of the sufferer shape their suffering. “Culture shapes the way general psychopathology is going to be translated partially or completely into specific psychopathology,” Lee says. “When there is a cultural atmosphere in which professionals, the media, schools, doctors, psychologists all recognize and endorse and talk about and publicize eating disorders, then people can be triggered to consciously or unconsciously pick eating-disorder pathology as a way to express that conflict.”
Read the entire article here.
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