Week 6- Rachel Ibrahim

Rachel Ibrahim

Week 6

Section A03

Despite the continuing effort to bring awareness to the issue, mental illness still remains a very stigmatized disease, especially in America. Relating to the Americanization of mental illness part of this week's, theme, Ethan Watters’ article from the New York TImes, ‘The Americanization of Mental Illness,’ brings to light important worldwide issues regarding mental illness. The idea behind the Americanization of mental illness is that we push our western ideologies, diagnoses, treatments and stigmatization upon other countries around the world despite the fact that each case of mental illness differs depending on the culture around the patient. This causes a major issue because the causes and even diseases themselves are extremely different than the cases found in the United States and therefore, addressing them like American doctors would is not the way to go about it. Another issue brought up in the article is how people view those with a mental illness and how that view changes depending on the perceived cause. Studies showed that those who thought the illness was caused similar to a disease where it is just an effect of biochemistry were much harsher towards the patient than those who believed it was caused by a life event as a child. Personally I find this behavior so odd because people would never treat someone with a disease such as cancer that harshly, yet I don’t see the difference between the two diseases; both are out of the patient’s control and have a negative impact on their life. Whatever the cause of the illness, I think it is important to address each case as unique and different, so that every patient receives the best care possible. The Americanization of mental illness makes it impossible to give patients the care they deserve, which is no less than that of any cancer patient and we continue to see mental illness as a scary thing that doesn’t deserve the type of treatment other diseases do. Globalization has many positive effects but along with it comes the negative impacts of the Americanization of so many things, like mental illnesses.

Question: How come the U.S. has so much influence on how other countries around the world perceive things? We talk a lot about how the Americanization of topics influences countries but what about equally as developed countries like England? Why does a country like England not have a big of as impact on other countries?

References:

Watters, E. (2010, January 8). The Americanization of Mental Illness. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html