Ethan Watters The Mega-Marketing Of Depression In Japan

Some say that “doctors are overdosing normal sadness to major depression” and that antidepressants actually make the situation worse or bring on depression that wasn’t there. For some people taking antidepressants may have effective results for a short time, but they actually increase the odds of chronical illness. Society is becoming more isolated and independent , where people live daily in irritation and aggressive lifestyles, which causes people to rebel. That everyday we all go through periods of hopelessness, which is true, but depression is where it's constant and tears you apart.” The most common explanations for the mental illness epidemic include recent overdiagnosis of psychiatric disorders, diagnostic expansionism, and psychiatry's pathologizing normal behavior”( ), or that it's easier to qualify or check the box for depression for a lot more people. Mental Illnesses put a lot of stress and disorder in the hostess life and isn’t just an over diagnostic or an act of rebellion.

In Ethan Watters’ essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” he has a discussion with Dr. Laurence Kirmayer regarding Kirmayer’s invitation to the International Consensus Group on Depression and Anxiety. In their discussion Kirmayer talks about how the basis of his invitation was on the notion that he as the director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill could add to the answer the large pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline was looking for. The question at hand was how culture influences the illness experience, but more specifically how depression is influenced by culture in Japan. If the conference was a success, the company would be able to enter and expand into a market worth billions of dollars. The reason that the cultural aspect of depression was very important was because in countries like Japan, the American conception of depression was taken as a more serious illness, rivaling heights of diseases like schizophrenia. The company hoped that by somehow changing the Japan’s perception of the illness from being something social or moral to the American conception where expressing the illness to others is considered being strong person rather than being a weak one, that their drug Paxil would be able to sell to the market, which is where the scientific and economic aspects of depression come into effect. The scientific and economic aspects take place due to the intentions of the company to sell the drug, and the drug’s ability to help

Culture is known to be able to shape the beliefs of a society through its language. The term “depression” for example, was not commonly used due to the impression that depression was not psychological, but rather more physical. This is because the people of Japan were able to find ways to avoid giving in to the feeling and moving on with their lives. In Ethan Watters’ “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, Watters looks into how pharmaceutical companies attempted to change the concept of depression in Japan in order to create a market to sell their antidepressant drugs. He discusses how the Japanese culture was influenced by the companies that were selling the drugs by imposing western beliefs on Japan, which would result in the

Thus far, I have learned about the pros and cons to using medication in treatment with clients. In addition, I have seen first hand the benefits of implementing medications in client’s treatment plan. From my understanding, Depression is one of the most prevalent illnesses in the world. Because of this fact it is important that we understand and explore all the implications surrounding the use and efficacy for treatment. In order to treat our clients with the best care possible, we as therapist should be educated on the types of medications for depression, the impact they have on the body, and their efficacy of improving symptoms and overall functioning. In this paper I will explore three articles about antidepressants and their efficacy for treating clients with depression. In addition, I will provide my overall reaction to the studies and the material provided for the efficacy of antidepressants for treating depression.

In this rapidly globalizing world, the jobs of the advertisers and marketers are to make sure we, the general public, have no control over our wants and desires. However, it is impossible for them to gain full control, but they do a good job of restricting what freedoms we do have. Big companies want us to believe that we have control by changing cultural norms without us realizing they did. Ethan Watters discusses how marketers plan to redesign Japanese culture for their benefit in his narrative titled “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan.” Watters makes it clear big companies, such as the drug company GlaxoSmithKline, are reshaping Japanese culture to market a pill that supposedly cures depression. Society is constantly changing and companies are able to take advantage of that by prompting the route in which society chooses to take. Large companies practice this style of marketing everywhere in the world and they are successful in influencing us, the general public. Big companies are considered big because consumers continuously buy their products, a lot of which are unnecessary. Their success brings light to the fact that we may believe that we have control, but it is just an illusion.

Through the perspective of Kalman Applbaum, a contributor to the piece, Watters writes, “The more Applbaum talked to drug company insiders[,] the more righteous frustration he found. When he visited the offices of a leading SSRI manufacturer in November 2001, he discovered…anger directed at what they perceived as Japanese resistance to pharmaceutical progress” (2015, p. 158). Among these drug companies, PhRMA was also mentioned in Watters’s article. Thus, through their presence in more than one scholarly work about this subject, one could infer that it was the organization’s goal to enter the Japanese market. Nonetheless, this was not the solitary effort of PhRMA, but of a network of pharmaceutical companies. Referring back to Mahlich, his research does not specify which companies broke the barriers, but he does mention, “the Japanese government has successfully reduced prices for pharmaceuticals and reduced entry barriers for foreign firms” (2006, p.75). Accordingly, Western companies effectively toppled entry barriers by bringing Japan’s internal focus the subject of international critique as well as pandering to Japanese

Despite a vastly advanced health-care system, the rate of depression is increasingly high. Depression has

Ethan Watters’s Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche explores there reality of mental illness. The chapter “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” discusses the relationship between “scientific” notion and culturally accepted norms. Western pharmaceutical companies rushed to Japan to tap into a new lucrative market. In the process, scientific fact was often brushed to the side in order to make the largest profit. Through the introduction of scientific research regarding the correlation between SSRIs and depression, the West culturally imperialized Japan in order to make a profit.

There is an illness like none other, that sweeps across nations but is not contagious. It withdraws any and all feelings of all from from every area of life. Many experience it after a specific situation that elicits extreme sadness, loss, or pain. Other’s feel it for no apparent reason and are left seemingly to fend for themselves in the only dark abyss that they know. This malady is known as depression affects many people of all kinds every singly year. If the world knew how depression truly affects its victims, it would realize it’s not merely a mood or emotion one experiences, but rather a true and physical disease.

However, there are multiple theories. Patients of all ages use antidepressants because the drugs tend to alleviate depression in a relatively safe manner (“Antidepressant Drugs” 2). Supporters of antidepressants say that the drugs play an important role in easing the suffering of millions of Americans who suffer from depression. They say that by making treatment of depression easier, the drugs have allowed many people to overcome the stigma associated with depression (5). The adolescent suicide rate declined about 15% in the United States between 1985 and 1999, while use antidepressants in that age group was rising by nearly 70% (Harvard Mental Health Letter, May 2005, 3). It can be concluded from this statistic that antidepressants most likely were the reason for the decline in adolescent

In Ethan Watters’ essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” he has a discussion with Dr. Laurence Kirmayer regarding Kirmayer’s invitation to the International Consensus Group on Depression and Anxiety. In their discussion, Kirmayer talks about how the basis of his invitation was on the notion that he as the director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill could add to the answer the large pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline was looking for. The question at hand was how culture influences an illness experience, but more specifically how depression is influenced by culture in Japan. A similar notion of influence can be seen in Karen Ho’s essay, “Biographies of Hegemony”, in which the idea of being a part

Theodore Kaczynski once said, “Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable." The debate on whether antidepressants truly work or are just purely psychological has been going on for many years. Numerous doctors believe they should put everyone who thinks they have mental health problems on these antidepressants, while others strongly urge the patient to go to counseling and find the cause before medicating them. Medication used for balancing out a person’s emotional state, to some may seem

Depression is considered to be the "common cold of psychological disorders." This is because depression is the most common mood disorder. In fact, depression is becoming more and more widespread and the incidences of depressive disorders are increasing rapidly.

One of the scariest emotional experiences a person can ever suffer during their lifetime is to experience a form of depression. Over one in five Americans can expect to get some form of depression in their lifetime. Over one in twenty Americans have a depressive disorder every year. Depression is one of the most common and most serious mental health problems facing people today. However, depression is often not taken seriously because of the large use of antidepressant drugs and the large number of sufferers. Depression is a serious illness and should be taken as so. Contrary to the popular misconceptions about depression today, it is a serious and deadly disorder.1

Depression is the most common of all psychological disorders, affecting 100 million people worldwide. The depression ranges from mild feelings of uneasiness, sadness, and apathy to intense suicidal despair. (Kasschau) If left untreated, it could lead the