In The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan by Ethan Watters, Watters proves one has no autonomy over one self’s well-being. One’s well-being is one’s state of happiness and satisfactory of existence. However, Watters confirms how the influence of culture’s principles and values evolves one’s own belief of well-being. Individuals are so heavy influenced by culture that they lose control of their own experiences. Subsequently, individuals lose the importance of thinking for one’s self. Watters explores the themes of conformity, impact of language, effect of social influence, and need to rely on experts. In The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan by Ethan Watters, Watters affirms that individuals assert their experiences on the foundation …show more content…
Japanese individuals allow other cultural influence to establish their mindset and actions. As Watters states, “Feelings that Americans associate with depression have, in Japan, been wrapped up in a variety of cultural narratives that altered their meaning and the subjective experience for the individual,” (522). Japanese individuals rely on other cultures to control their way of living and thinking, and therefore lose recognition of the value of undergoing independent experience. Watters proves this perception of uniformity by contending to the belief that, “By applying a one-size fits all notion of depression around the world, Kirmayer argued, we run the risk of obscuring the social meaning and response the experience might be indicating,” (518). Individuals in Japanese culture are so influenced by other cultures that they lack control over their own experiences and in turn, lose their …show more content…
One’s thoughts and actions are direct responses to what one has absorbed from who they label as experts. Watters affirms, “One of the chilling things about these events, whether a puzzle or a scandal, is how a very few people in key positions can determine the course of events and shape the consciousness of a generation,” (513). Individuals allow themselves to be influenced by exerts so much so that they blindly permit, “These companies upending long-held cultural beliefs about the meaning of illness and healing,” (519). The individuals in Japanese culture subsequently allow these experts to take “long-held cultural beliefs” and standards and transform these beliefs into uniform diagnostic “three minute surveys”. Not only do individuals rely on who they regard as experts, but manufactures do as well. Watters states, “When I asked Applbaum why they were so forthcoming, he told me it was simple: because of his business school credentials and his extensive experience in the Japanese market, they thought he might be able to give them some free advice,” (523). GlaxoSmithKline also take who they consider an expert and confide in their
After living in Japan for seventeen years, David Aldwinkle decided to become a Japanese citizen (Weiner & Aldwinkle, 2003). He has immersed himself in the culture, changing his name to Arudou Debito. He has written a book in Japanese about racial discrimination in Japan entitled Japanese Only, teaches at a local university and he even has relinquished his American citizenship. Throughout that time, he has experienced examples of both ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
According to Kirmayer, “...every culture has a type of experience that is in some ways parallel to the Western conception of depression…” (Watters 517). He proves this by explaining how a Nigerian man “might experience a peppery feeling in his head” (Smith 517) or how symptoms of depression in an American Indian project as feelings of loneliness. Depending on the location of the country and the language used to describe distress, symptoms of depression varies from region to region. He described this as “explanatory models” that “created the culturally expected experience of the disease in the mind of the sufferer” (Watters 518). In other words, the cause of depression is different for every country and thus each person experiences and describes depression in a way that matches their culture and environment. American researchers and clinicians often overlook culturally distinct symptoms because Americans classify depression in terms that might contradict the standards of other
The dominant biomedical model of health does not take into consideration lay perspectives (SITE BOOK). Lay perspectives go into detail about ordinary people’s common sense and personal experiences. A cultural perspective, like the Hmong cultures perspective on health, is considered a lay perspective. Unlike the Hmong culture, where illness is viewed as the imbalance between the soul and the body, the dominant biomedical model of health views health in terms of pathology and disease (SITE THE BOOK). Although the Hmong culture considers spiritual and environmental factors, the dominant biomedical model of health only looks at health through a biological perspective, and neglects the environment and psychological factors that affect health. Depression in the U.S. is a medical illness caused by neurochemical or hormonal imbalance and certain styles of thinking. Depression is the result of unfortunate experiences that the brain has difficulties processing (SITE 7). Unlike the Hmong culture, where Hmong’s who are diagnosed with depression report the interaction between a spirit, people diagnosed with depression in the Western culture report themselves to having symptoms such as feeling tired, miserable and suicidal (SITE
Measuring depression in different culture is a complicated task, “there is a need for tools for multicultural mental health primary in order to promote communication and improve clinical diagnosis” (Lehti et al, 2009). This results indicated that there is still a need for a tool to accurately measure depression in patients from different countries/cultures. Each culture is unique in its very own, and certain abnormal behavior can only be found in certain culture. For instance, in western society we have the histrionic personality disorder, in which an individual desperately seek out attention, while in Japan, there is a phenomenon called “hikikomori” is an abnormal behavior where a person would go great length to avoid any social contract at any means. This abnormal behavior is similar to the avoidant personality disorder, however hikikomori is more severe. “Hikikomori is used to refer to group of young people who have withdrawn from social life and have had no relationships outside of family for a period in excess of six months.” (Furlong, 2008). The long period of time to be withdrawn from society is quite serious and will have many psychological damage. Another factor that is important when looking at abnormal behavior is the gender. The gender of an individual have play an important role in shaping the diagnosis and the diagnostic feature of these symptoms.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs and the efficient usage of media outlets.
The film used outside sources like journalists and politicians to give statistics. This appeal to logic doesn’t help me accredit them because they use opinions to state an argument instead of data. When these self-proclaimed ‘experts’ are less than qualified with their professional experiences, they can pretty much say anything that they want, and we will believe them because they’re professionals and we trust that they are experts, when they don’t have a clue. Therefore, I believe that these professionals pick and choose what they can and cannot speak about. It would help if they were honest and clearer about their experience. The consequence of not being clear about their qualifications and standpoints is that the public mostly cannot know who is speaking sense and who is speaking gibberish. With such a dilemma in the United States we need people who are trustworthy; professionals that have the clinical experience and people who show that they’ve done their research, people who are
Farrar, 2014 In the U.S., the therapeutic group seldom has approaches to correspond with individuals of societies so drastically unique in relation to standard American society; even a great interpreter will think that it troublesome deciphering ideas between the two separate societies' reality ideas. American specialists, not at all like Hmong shamans, regularly physically touch and cut into the collections of their patients and utilize an assortment of capable medications and meds.
However, entering into a market as different as Japan is not without its risks, and must be ensured to be successful, with the help of market research, marketing, and operational theories, lest the new venture become a very costly mistake. Target Consumer Market When moving to a market with a consumer culture so different from the home market, a company must be careful to analyse its target audience in detail, to avoid costly cultural faux pas. To get a good feel for the Japanese culture, a good place to start would be the experts in the cultural studies field. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, created during his in-depth GLOBE study of the cultures of the world, gives a good comparison between the priority differences between Japanese and English culture. A detailed analysis of the cultural differences will be given in the ‘Marketing Issues’ section of the report.
In this documentary, Roko Belic an American film producer and director tries to explain happiness by traveling the world from Louisiana, United States to Okinawa, Japan to learn more about happiness of different ages, classes and ethnicities of people. He explains that in his documentary by interviewing several normal people about their
With this paper I wanted to focus on psychological aspects that had to do with a different side of the culture. There are three key aspect of information from the c...
According to Freud’s conclusion, based on decades of experimentation and theoretical work in the field of psychotherapy, humans cannot be happy because a satisfaction of needs creates only a momentary phase of happiness which expires after some time. Therefore, the focus of life should not be on obtaining happiness, and people should focus on avoiding suffering instead (Bullock, n.d.). However, several paradigms of well-being exist, and individual cognitive patterns and paradigms define the emotional responses to social influences. From an objective viewpoint, well-being is a state of consciousness that arises from a combination of internal and external factors, and money is an unstable external influence in defining subjective well-being. Money as a determinant of subjective well-being is influenced by several cultural influences.
Throughout history, human beings have developed diverse cultures all over the world. Within the many cultures and countries of the world one can also find many different “subcultures” that have appeared over the years. Merriam Webster’s Online dictionary defines a subculture as: “an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society” (Merriam-Webster). That said, this essay will take a look at a subculture unique to Japan, called: “Hikikomori.” Hikikomori have become a major issue in Japan. Practically interpreted as "social withdrawal”, hikikomori refers “to the state of anomie into which an increasing number of young Japanese seem to fall these days.” Thus, in order to understand the subculture of hikikomori, one should first learn what exactly hikikomori are, its effects on the individual involved within the subculture as well as the family and friends surrounding the hikikomori, and lastly how and when this subculture began.
Many of us, if not everyone, has heard of the country of Japan through various means. Possibly through popular films such as Godzilla or the renowned horror films which the country produces. Perhaps through the various anime TV shows that have been dubbed in English creating a massive fan base here in the United States, or the massive franchise Nintendo that has filled our child memories with countless hours spent in front of a screen playing Mario or Pokémon. One way or another the Japanese have shared their culture with a huge audience but thats only scratching the surface of the Japanese culture. The country of Japan wasn’t always the islands that we see there today, the formation of the islands occurred during 50,000 BC and ended in 10,000 BC following the end of the last ice age. This is when we find the first signs of civilization in Japan but they are nowhere near the modern day Japanese culture today. The early beginnings of today’s Japanese culture dates back to the year 538 AC with multiple time periods slowly building up to today. The Japanese culture of today shares a few aspects with our American culture we are familiar with, both cultures love baseball, we both have representative democracies as a form of government, and both cultures do not label outsiders differently and accept them just as equally. Even though we may share aspects of our culture with the Japanese our cultures couldn’t be anymore different from each other.
Suh, E. M., & Oishi, S. (2002). Subjective well-being across cultures. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online Readings in Psychology and Culture