Week 6 - Jamie McCaa

Jamie McCaa

ASA 002 Section A03
Week 6

I found this weeks readings to be very interesting, and made me think about mental illnesses in ways I haven't before. Generally, when I read about Western influence on other places, it pertains more to consumable things - like food, clothing, or even beauty standards. "The Americanization of Mental Illness" was yet another example of how deep Western influence runs. Additionally, thinking about medicine and diagnoses as not objective truths, but as things manipulated by industry sometimes in order for profit or increased need for medication is yet another form of corruption that this course has exposed me to, or at least gave me more information to articulate my thoughts better about corrupt industries I am already aware of. "The Americanization of Mental Illness" also discusses how the medical industry tries to remove stigma from mental illness by framing mental illness as a strictly biomedical issue, detached from social and cultural influences - in that sense, mental illnesses that do not present themselves as the way defined by Western biomedical definitions are invalidated. I think that this way of thinking is definitely more harmful than helpful to our attitudes towards the mentally ill; for one, it narrows our understanding of how mental illnesses develop in different contexts and more importantly how they can be treated, and secondly, it also creates a stigma of the patient, as if their medical condition makes something inherently "wrong" with them. I also think this is relevant to how traditional ways of healing are usually seen in America as being "superstitions" or not really effective; this is similar to how non-Western religious beliefs are also sometimes written off as just mere mythology. It's important to take heed to how these cultural forms of healing are important to the cultures they come from, especially when they are proven to be more effective than Western ways of healing - just as "The Americanization of Mental Illness" talks about non-Western treatments for schizophrenia being more effective.

Question: Is it possible to implement cultural ways of healing into the mainstream medical industry, or to get the resources to implement them into hospitals? Hire staffs? What kind of qualifications would someone need to practice?

References:

Watters, E. (2010). The Americanization of Mental Illness. The New York Times. Retrieved on October 29, 2017.

(n.d.) [digital image]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-21/schwager-war-against-natural-medicine/3840682