For Better or Worse: Exporting U.S. Ideas of Insanity

"To travel internationally is to become increasingly unnerved by the way American culture pervades the world," writes Ethan Watters in the most recent edition of Adbusters. I couldn't agree more. I've eaten at more TGIFs, listened to more bad pop music and drank more cups of instant Nescafe in the developing world than I ever have here at home. But what concerns Watters isn't just America's impact on foreign eating and entertainment habits — it's our impact on the human mind.

"Our golden arches do not represent our most troubling impact on other cultures; rather it is how we are flattening the landscape of the human psyche," writes Watters in his most recent book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. According to the author, America is exporting our own conceptions of crazy to the rest of the world — to the detriment of indigenous cultures and world views.

Though "madness" has never been an exclusively American phenomenon, some of the illnesses popularized in America (like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia) are spreading like wildfire — along with their (drug-heavy) therapies. Accordingly, says Watters, "Indigenous forms of mental illness and healing are being bulldozed by disease categories and treatments made in the USA."

Watters' commentary comes as a direct counterpoint to calls to increase development aid for mental health — especially in response to natural disasters and post-conflict situations. According to the WHO, mental illness accounts for 14% of the global burden of disease (what some are calling the "invisible problem in international development"). In many developing countries, the mentally ill are left seriously untreated and stigmatized by communities that don't understand the biomedical causes of their mental disorders.

And while I'd love to end this post with an analysis that expertly synthesizes both views and puts my mind at ease, I actually remain a bit conflicted. What do you think? Is there a balance to be found between psychological homogeny and biomedical mental health relief?

Photo Credit: dierk schaefer