Why am I passionate about this?
I am intrigued by the diversity of human responses to suffering. As a social scientist, I've had the great fortune to carry out research in Israel, Okinawa (Japan), and the US. People in each of these countries have experienced horrific events, and they deal with the suffering they’ve endured in very different ways. In Israel and Okinawa, people seem to understand that suffering is a natural part of life and come together to deal with the aftermath of tragedy. In the US, in contrast, we tend to treat tragedy as an individual trauma that leads to emotional pathology, and our responses tend to be limited to therapy, medicine, and drugs.
Susan's book list on mental illness, drug use, trauma, and crime
Why did Susan love this book?
This book differs from the others on my “best books” list. This one doesn’t deal (directly) with the convergences of mental illness and criminal justice institutions and policies. However, it provides extraordinary insight into the many ways in which mental health/illness has been understood in diverse societies around the world and into the power of American ideas and treatments to eradicate that diversity within incredibly brief periods of time.
This book has great chapters on the rise of anorexia in Hong Kong, changing responses to schizophrenia in Zanzibar, and the marketing of depression in Japan. But the chapter that most spoke to me is “The Wave that Brought PTSD to Sri Lanka.” In this chapter Watters traces how American mental health professionals responded to the enormous, disastrous tsunami that wiped out entire towns in 2004. In a nutshell, while American mental health professionals focused on PTSD, Sri Lankans were more…
3 authors picked Crazy Like Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
“A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson).
In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad.
It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented…
- Coming soon!