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Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters: A Brief Book Report
I’m not a doctor. No, I don’t play one on TV either. (I do look like a guy who might pretend to be a doctor without fooling anyone, though.)
I’m also not a patient, nor am I on any prescriptions. I have no connections to anything in the medical field, except for the yearly checkups the Korean government insists I have.
I heard this book being discussed on, of all things, an Australian paranormal podcast. (The paranormal is my science fiction.) The book has ZERO paranormal content, so don’t be put off by that. I was hooked from the beginning of the program.
The book asserts that Big Pharma et al. are basically exporting Western ideas of psychosomatic illnesses – if not the illnesses themselves – to the rest of the world. One example is anorexia, a rare condition that spread in the US like wildfire after Karen Carpenter’s death. Anorexia in the Far East was not seen as a disease of wanting to be thin, but rather as a result of trauma. The women affected by it fit a totally different profile than those in the West.
Watters asserts, with research backup, that schizophrenic patients in poor countries have better long-term outlooks and fewer episodes than those in wealthy nations, and explains how a Tanzanian family deals with multiple family members with schizophrenia.
One chapter shows how Western trauma counselors flocked to Sri Lanka after a tragedy and basically installed PTSD (a diagnosis originally created specifically for Vietnam War veterans) in the minds of the people, who had no concept of it before. There’s a startling anecdote about how the citizens who didn’t receive counseling were happier than those who did.
Another chapter deals with how drugs like Paxil were marketed in Japan for depression, but the market had to be created first.
There’s a lot of inside drug baseball to sift through. A lot of drug company research machinations. And real stories. Watters shows page after page of examples of how a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health is unproductive. I’m not saying it’s all true – just telling you what I read. I’m not anti-vax, and I’m not a Scientologist.
Here’s how it looks:
Soundtrack:
Published in General
Okay, so it WASN’T that brief.
As these things go, it was plenty brief.
A briefing book?
I was wearing briefs while reading.
Fake news. Boxers. I’m not a savage.
But were they made from recycled legal briefs?
No, from the desiccated fibers of old boxers. Might be a bit of Jack Dempsey in the waistband.
There is no crazy to see here. Move along.
Seems a lot saner here (on this thread) than elsewhere. Watch out!
Maybe in other nations, lifestyle plays a part.
We keep hearing that the French or Greek or Italian diet is better than ours. Filled up with delicious and affecting wines at lunch time, a two hour lunch time BTW, and then artisinal cheeses and breads, the average European can expect to be healthier.
I don’t know if that covers all of it. Perhaps the continual upsurges of adrenaline experienced by anyone driving down the autobahn at 200 mph means that there’s less like likelihood of schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s. There have been movies I’ve watched where just seeing Rome’s drivers dodging in and out of each other’s paths makes me feel invigorated, although maybe not in a good way.
If people in other nations care about their health, they would do well to avoid any Rx drugs for depression, anxiety, feeling off and etc. And above all, in my book – don’t give up the 2 hour lunches.
So pass me another nice red Italian wine!
These artisinal breads and cheeses have likely overlooked those progressive petroleum products used for flavoring and color that so enrich the American diet. Except now that dratted RFK Jr is dragging us back to more primitive ways.
If You think Africa is bad now, wait until We introduce Them to bulimia.
My grandfather used to save the “white pennies” that he collected in the cash register of his country store and give them to me. Of course, somewhere along the line I must have spent them all. By the end of the 50s they got to be rather uncommon.