Based on the reading for this week "The Americanization of Mental Illness" and the TedTalk "Depression: the disease of civilization":
In my opinion the term “depression” is use nowadays to any situation in which a person feel stress or with pressure in their life. The industrialization of this term is changing how people see their problems in life. I have to agree with the fact that maybe depression would be less common if it had not been industrialized. Is turning to be a common term used even in our daily’s conversations without knowing what it really means.
Another factor that has implications in the Americanization of Mental Illness is culture. “Psychiatrist have pointed out that the mental health ideas we export to the world are rarely unadulterated scientific facts and never culturally neutral.” Ethan Watters. I have to support Watters in this matter. Not every culture is the same therefore the people are not mentally health equals.
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As Ruth White express in her article, it therefore should not be surprising that culture would influence our physical and mental health in a complex interplay of factors that vary not only individually but also in the collective. This fact explains why in the reading Watters use as an example the case of anorexia in Hong Kong. Dr. Sing Lee noticed the difference between Hong Kong’s anorexia and Americans’ Anorexia. Factors like their diet and social activities interfere with the perception of each one mental illness. I understand based on what Watters stated before, before sharing any information around the world about mental illness or any other disorder the culture of each place should be study and analyzed by experts to confirm a