Week 6 - Karen Nguyen

Karen Nguyen

ASA 002 A02

May 07, 2017 

I did not know that mental illnesses could be “Americanized.” However, in “The Americanization of Mental Illness” by Ethan Watters, Watters talks exactly about how it can be Americanized. He goes in depth about how mental illnesses were seen before the West tried to spread their “knowledge” and the aftermath of the West successfully getting other countries to adopt their doctrine about mental illnesses. From the article, it was clear that Watters believes that mental illnesses are the result of the environment the individual with it resides in which makes sense. There is a whole separate discussion about which has the most influence on a person’s behavior/personality, nature vs. nurture. To support his belief, Watters uses the example of the psychiatrist that was documenting a form of anorexia that was not a result of extreme dieting. However, Hong Kong’s public perception about anorexia changed to believe that all forms of anorexia are due to extreme dieting when an anorexic girl dropped dead. The news outlets simply looked at the American diagnostic manuals. These news outlets did not bother to look at their local psychiatrists as to why this was. This may be because of the inherent belief that the West knows the best and so if they say that all mental diseases are the same, then they are. This is very similar to the belief that other countries have, that the West is trying to dominate the scientific world and are pushing their beliefs onto other countries as they believe that their science is right.

Question

Americanizing mental illnesses is something that is extremely plausible; however, do you believe that it is possible to Americanize science? If so, why?

References

Watters, E. (2010, January 09). The Americanization of Mental Illness. Retrieved May 06, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html