video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ6vR1TABn4
SYDNEY VOLKERTS
*statistics come from WHO’s 2011 Mental Health Atlas: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9799241564359_eng.pdf?ua=1
**Watters, E. (2010, January 8). The americanization of mental illness. The New York Times, p. MM40. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I like the topic of mental illness and how it connects to global sociology but i didn’t understand the relevance of stating the 75% of suicides in 2012. Mental illness are chronic diseases that don’t always result in suicide. I agree that mental illnesses such a depression may occur in lower and middle classes more often because of the struggles and social forces they are forced to bear (and could push people to suicide) but mental illness are also genetic. Both the social and genetic factors must be considered because mental illnesses do not care if one is wealthy. Also the misconseption that only those who are “crazy” or “need help” go to a psychologist or psychiatrist make people of any class more unwilling to go.
I really liked this project. I think a lot of times we kind of ignore the just how many diverse areas of life are impacted by globalization especially when we’re only exposed to the Western way. I remember this topic in particular was hard for me to reconcile with my own views and medical/biological background when it came up in Cultural Competency because in biology and in medicine Western medical practice is reified and it’s never really put in comparison or in dialogue with the way other cultures have come to understand and treat illnesses, especially when it comes to illnesses that are as invisible as mental illness. I think because mental illness has to do with the brain and consciousness, things that are still only lightly understood in Western science, it’s even more important to take into account different cultural views and insights because they have a lot to offer (same for physical ailments but those are a little more scientifically backed up I feel like).
This topic is very interesting and I would not have otherwise connected mental illness with globalization. I like how the use of statistics helped picture the amount of mental illness cases. Also, I liked how you included social terms that helped to explain the relation of mental illness with globalization. The connection with Westernization and people’s perceptions about mental illnesses was very interesting and smart. Hopefully the issue of mental illness will be brought up more to people’s awareness so that more studies and help can be reached out to people.
You infogprahic was really interesting because it brought points that we might not necessarily think in terms of globalization. You info graph illustrated the main problem with mental health illness which is that not everybody receive the treatment they need. However, I think it would have been worth mentioning that the statistics might not be 100 % true because many psychological disorders are stigmatized around the world and unreported.
Your link between globalization and imperialism is really important. However I think that cultural beliefs and ideas are an important factor in understanding mental illness, and therefor saying that people cannot access resources to help them deal with their mental illnesses may not necessarily be true based on the fact that every case is different depending on cultural backgrounds.
I think this was a very interesting topic. As a person wanting to go into working with people with special needs in the future, this issue caught my attention and gave me some good insight into how different parts of the world view mental illness. I like how you compare Eastern and Western medicine, because it really does affect how we look at mental health. The western part of the world is more globalized and progressive, and we are just now coming to accept mental illness as a legitimate illness. It is interesting how you point out how the eastern part of the world has not gotten here. One think I might have liked to see in this piece is what we can do to help spread the word to other countries like we have in the US about mental illness; maybe just one or two bullets on the infographic, but overall I think this was a great project on a very interesting topic.