Depression Metaphors

The metaphors that support the idea that depression is a state of moral correctness and a circumstance of a celebrated personality, alter Japan’s ideologies which results in the commendation of those who have the disease. The Japanese’s alternate interpretation of depression formed a metaphor that discredits the victims of the disease, thus creating a piety that disregards its existence. Alongside Japan’s belief in typus melancholicus, the country 's’ society also understood the mental disease as an endogenous depression which “was a crippling type of psychosis believed to be caused by a genetic abnormality (Watters 520). This severe disease inhibits the victim from performing an average person’s daily activities, since their mind is in a

The disease’s negative status amongst the nation’s general population formed the metaphor that tarnished the standing of all people afflicted in their society. The sufferers of endogenous depression were a disgrace to the public eye and treated by others with a sense of lost respect and lost reputation. The social implications of the mental illness would cause the victim to be unable to engage in normal communication with the rest of the population that does not have the sickness. Endogenous depression was “treated as an evil, invincible predator, not just a disease” (Sontag 7). The general preconception regarding those with the serious illness helped transform Japan’s cultural beliefs system concerning how to react and manage a state of affairs including those who are sufferers of the disease. In the event of having the disease, the illness “can be a scandal that jeopardizes one’s love life, one’s chance of promotion, even one’s job” (Sontag 8). All different types of people regardless of their connection to the victim will assume that the sufferer is unable to communicate as effectively, thus lessening the chances of advancing in or

The way the western society viewed depression involved the use of antidepressant or drugs to deal with “a loss of connectedness to others or a decline in social status or personal motivation” (Watters 517). The western ideology regarding depression was that the cause of the depression was an imbalance in serotonin levels. This resulted in the promotion of “the class of antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)” (Watters 515). The western version of ideologies of the self resulted in the the metaphor about depression regarding it as a disease where “one’s body betrays one’s feelings” (Sontag 40). In a word association test conducted on caucasian americans, the subjects were to describe or associate words with depression, resulting in many word associations that signified they “were looking inward to describe depression” (Watters 522). The American cultural belief about the mind is that it is the only source where one can describe the self. When serotonin levels are imbalanced, one’s mind is consumed by depression and and thus emits feelings such as loneliness, sadness, anxiousness. The western ideology of depression deals with “discontent... and obsessive preoccupation with the isolated self and its never altogether satisfactory ‘relationships’” (Sontag 51). These