How the US Exports Its Mental Illness

Mental illness is experienced differently around the world. But with Americans dominating the discussion on mental health, how such diseases are classified and treated has become homogenized. This could end up causing more harm than good. Exacerbating the situation is the presence of multinational drug companies that need to sell more product. For example, in Japan, whose clinical definition of depression was much different than the Western one, marketers had to equate other descriptions with the illness to attract demand for their product. Additionally, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is being spread by US trauma counselors working in post-conflict zones. But it's not clear that the PTSD diagnosis, which has only been “officially” extant in the US for 30 years, can be applied to other cultures. The key criticism is that Western diagnoses frequently overlook culturally distinct manifestations of trauma or disease. Furthermore, some doctors “pathologize” the symptoms of non-Western patients; that is, what may be viewed as a perfectly reasonable reaction in one culture, becomes an illness under the gaze of Western medicine. For the moment, the globalization of US definitions of mental illness do not seem to be helping the patient. ―YaleGlobal