Summary Of Crazy Like Us The Globalization Of The American Psyche

Introduction The homogenization of mental health in all aspects is a focus of Ethan Watters in his book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. Watters explores and explains his opinions on how America is globalizing mental health in a negative way. He sets the book up as a compilation of case studies that support his idea of mental health homogenization. The four case studies all occur in places outside of America, naturally, but all of the people involved are affected by America in some way. This idea of the globalization of American ideas is not only a real thing, it can be negative in various ways. Furthermore, many Americans that are responsible for the promotion and proliferation of these ideas have no clue how they

The four case studies discussed in this book talk about how this phenomenon has negatively affected the people and places it has reached. The first case study deals with anorexia nervosa patients in Hong Kong and how America’s view on anorexia affected the people in Hong Kong. The second case studies talks about the Sri Lanka tsunami and the efforts of people to aid the victims of this tragedy. The third case study is centered on a schizophrenia patient in Zansibar. The fourth and final case study discusses a pharmaceutical company’s exploitation of Japanese depression patients (or lack thereof) to make a massive amount of money. These four studies are only a few of the many examples of how America is negatively passing on ideas on how to treat people and

The first case study, as previously mentioned, discusses anorexia nervosa patients in Hong Kong under Dr. Sing Lee. Dr. Lee was a psychiatrist working at Hong Kong University in China. He specifically dealt with people that had eating disorders and more specifically, people with anorexia. He believed that his patients had a unique type of anorexia compared to how Americans viewed anorexia. His patients mainly complained about physical ailments that were causing them not to eat, such as bloating of the stomach. In America, most anorexia patients starve themselves due to obsession of being skinny, fear of being fat, or because “everyone else does it.” Dr. Lee was highly focused on finding out why this was and was trying to figure out why it was unique to his area. On November 24, 1994 one of Dr. Lee’s patients, Charlene Hsu Chi-Yang, died in public due to complications from anorexia. This event sparked what would be a disaster to Dr. Lee’s progress in dealing with anorexia. Journalists and reporters paralleled this event to events that happened in America, which is exactly the opposite of what Dr. Lee needed to continue progress in his care and research. America views anorexia differently, mostly negatively, which made an imprint on how people in China view anorexia. This caused a great deal of unrest in the world of mental health in the East. They deal with anorexia