Dollars for Sense

New York Times and Esquire jounralist Ethan Watters has a new book, "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche", re American's global influence on the categorization and treatment of mental illnesses irrespective of cultural differences, or as he puts it: America's role in "homogenizing the way the world goes mad". He speaks about how British pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline infiltrated the Japanese market where before SSRIs were exceedingly rare, essentially by worrying the line between perceived normalcy and pathology which, in order to do so, it was required that they partially restructure Japanese identity itself. Namely, the Japanese sense of sadness, which has always been considerably more complex than in the West, celebrated through songs and poems as something of a restorative agent. So how'd GSK compromise their culture? They wined and dined the doctors. Fine, that's how it works everywhere, except I see a pattern here beginning with the Meiji Restoration running through the IJA's collaboration with Nazi Germany right up to today -- fortunately, I think enough influence runs the other way to make the trade-off more than fair. At least in Japan they know where it's coming from.