Week 6: Megan Tang

ASA 2

Megan Tang

The reading "Americanization of Mental Illnesses" talks about how the West has greatly impacted many cultures and shaped how many think about mental illnesses. Mental illnesses are usually thought to be a stigma and looked down upon and this has significantly increased after people started addressing mental illnesses as "brain diseases." Watters wrote about how pairing "brain diseases" with mental illnesses will help will taming the stigma. However, the medicine used treat brain diseases are different than that of mental illnesses - according to many. In addition, no one blames the someone for having a brain disease, but how come people blame the victim when they happen to have a mental illness? In elementary school, I remember students who were mentally disabled were treated differently than those who were sick with the common flu. Those were were sick with the flu were given tissues and "get well" cards in order to help them recover. However, on the other hand, students with mental illnesses were bullied. Bullying will pay an additional toll to the student who is mentally disabled. It can cause not only them anxiety and depression, but a slower recovery process. There are many cases that separate the two. Mental illnesses are treatable, but introducing them like how we introduce "brain diseases" is not very helpful to the stigma we have around mental illnesses. Instead, we should implement and educate the public to understand cases of mental illnesses so they can be aware and have knowledge about the respective topics. 

Question:

If mental illnesses were introduced the same time brain diseases were introduced, will there be a difference? It is because findings for mental illnesses were not documented until recently (19th century) and new research is still being looked into on this topic whereas brain diseases were introduced earlier.

References: 

Problems at School | Association for Children's Mental Health. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2017, from http://www.acmh-mi.org/get-help/navigating/problems-at-school/

MB, M. (2016, October 19). The 61 Best Teacher Memes On The Internet. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/495677502721868028