Mental Illness: Western Civilizations Fault

I am slightly at a loss for words, and for that matter coherence in my thoughts ... I guess it is true, mental illness.

We do not sell young girls panties in vending machines.

We do not have an entire underground business selling children that everyone knows about, understand exists, and we all pretend it doesn't.

We do not repress every emotion for the sake of productivity, nor do we work as passionately, yet we do work more than any people in any country on earth.  Perhaps we do emphasize certain values that place us at greater risk for certain diseases, but the trade off is, we are not a society of sexual deviants who pretend while at work and then unmask themselves in their treatment of women and children. 

We do not condone the behavior you find in many countries where they have little mental illness - in fact, there are so many holes in this story ... what do people do in Japan or Korea or ..., when they have problems that overwhelm them?  Easy, if we did what they do, we would have so few people with mental illnesses.  Further, because we shine the light on our imprefections, willingly or otherwise, all of the unseen are seen - unlike in Japan where an entire class of people are marginalized and unseen politically, economically, or perhaps medically.

Western values cause mental illness?

Thank God for our values, I really do not want your values - we happened to have won several wars to prevent those values from being forced upon us.  Does that mean our values are inherently better and healthier ... pretty much.  There are some issues, for sure, but not even in the same league.




The Times
August 10, 2006




Western values 'are causing mental illness'


THE rapid spread of Western business practices in Japan has caused widespread mental illness and is responsible for a deepening demographic crisis, government officials say.

Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers suffer from “high anxiety” and that 65 per cent of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.

Meanwhile, the size of the Japanese population is shrinking, and for the first time the Government has acknowledged that the falling birth rate is linked to job-related factors. Directors of the Japanese Mental Health Institute blame the same factors for rising levels of depression among workers and the country’s suicide rate, which remains the highest among rich nations.

Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. In the harsh new atmosphere of cut-throat rivalry between workers, the Institute for Population and Social Security argues, young people do not feel financially stable enough to start families.

The trend is put down to Japanese companies’ attempts to globalise by adopting working practices more closely in line with US and British models. Larger numbers of temporary staff, a greater willingness to sack people and greater pay disparities are the downside.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers — particularly those in their thirties — to mental turmoil. “People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns,” he said. “When people worked in teams they were happier.”





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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