article on mental illness

[merchimerch]

I always appreciate writing that emphasizes that science, medicine, and facts are all culturally embedded (so it's not just art, music, language, and opinion). This does an interesting job of looking at madness and mental illness in other cultures and a little bit historically, and examines the phenomenon of exporting American concepts of mental illness and the accompanying pharmacological cures to other places with different understandings. My favorite quote is: "The problem is that our biomedical advances are hard to separate from our particular cultural beliefs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?pagewanted=1&em