School of Visual Arts Abnormal Psychology I. Exam #3

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Question 2
-In “Crazy Like Us, The Americanization of Mental Illness,” the author (Ethan Watters) discusses how an American approach towards understanding and treating mental illness has become the global standard.  However, Watters suggests that this is both dangerous and counterproductive.  Why? What are the concerns that he has with a Western view of mental illness being employed in other parts of the world?  Please feel free to use specific examples from the book.  
Watter’s article is quite good but exporting, or globalizing American ideas about mental illnesses to the rest of the world is detrimental and counterproductive. Symptoms resemble a type of psychological conflict. Symptoms are vital and vary depending on different eras. Multiple locations give diverse “symptom repertoires” through which a patient’s distress can be painted. Symptoms are various depending on the culture, recover differently, and occur at different rates. Disorders contain neurochemical or neurological dynamics that are susceptible to drug treatment. As such, not all symptoms are culturally negotiable despite the severity, trajectory, or frequency, an aspect that leads to concerns when employing such a view of mental illness in other parts of the world. Besides, in some disorder cases, symptoms are malleable while different intransigent organic dimensions vary depending on the culture and not the therapist’s expectations. The essay provides possible concerns that Watters mentions in his book, providers why it is both detrimental and counterproductive using examples to enable the Americanization of Mental illnesses.
Case studies are essentially used to show how the globalization of modern treatments and theories in mental illnesses is dangerous. The first example of such an analysis is Hong Kong’s case of anorexia. Watters mentions that Dr. Sing Lee recorded how a rare form of anorexia occurred in Hong Kong in the 1990s and 1980s (Watters). The patients of Dr. Lee complained that they felt bloated and did not diet nor become fat intentionally. A girl who starved herself was later noticed in 1994 in the media (Watters). The doctor saw an increase in anorexia cases as the patients increased their diet and expressed fear of becoming fat, which is similar to American version disorder. The way the illness was presented became a more virulent American standard by the time the mental health doctors came to understand the diagnosis of anorexia. In essence, the generalization of psychological disorders led to specific eating disorders. The doctor explains that presence of a cultural atmosphere in which psychologists, doctors, professions, and institutions endorse and recognize or talk about making eating disorders public, people are triggered to unconsciously or consciously pick up a pathology of eating disorders as a way of expressing their conflict.
On the contrary, the disorders do not grow exponentially or at the same rate because therapists discuss or talk about them but might be caused by changing lifestyles, local anxieties, and physiological aspects. Western culture refers to a constellation of practices, idea...