Summary Of The Mega-Marketing Of Depression

When most people hear the phrase “The Great Depression” they only associate it the crash of the stock market and the hard times that followed. Here in the Midwest, when we think of the Great Depression we also think of the Dust Bowl and the Dirty Thirties. The Great Depression was a very climactic end to a series of poor choices that greatly affected the entire United States.

In order to break through to Japan, GlaxoSmithKline had to understand how their drug might fit into Japanese culture by understanding their concept of depression. Although the diagnosis of depression became more widely employed around the world during the 1980’s, “...the experience of deep sadness and distress in Japan retained the characteristics of the premodern conception of the mid-twentieth century idealization typus melancholicus, the idea that overwhelming sadness was natural, quintessentially Japanese, and, in some ways, an enlightened state”(522). These feelings of overwhelming sadness were positively looked upon through the media since people held high regard for personal hardships that build character. Watters’ article discusses how drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline reshape the Japanese culture through “mega-marketing” and proves that the pharmaceutical company’s expanding globalization of Paxil in Japan alters the Japanese individual’s concept of depression by changing the native culture and beliefs of the country through the process of approaching recent concerns and utilizing important people in Japan. Through advertisements, the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline rearranges the Japanese idea of depression such that it differs from society’s existing standard of

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.

The market can often face influences and change from numerous companies all at once. Companies aiming to introduce a product to a new population face the hurdle of influencing the market to create a need for their product, if there is not one already. In Ethan Watters’ essay, The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan, Watters addresses the methods with which GlaxoSmithKline introduces and changes the very culture of the Japanese in order to create a need for their antidepressant drug, Paxil. Though GlaxoSmithKline’s efforts to create a need for their drug, a cultural shift occurred, one in which changed the very way of life for the Japanese. As stated in Watters’ essay, the executives did not present themselves as people only driven by profits

Predetermined realities are realities that people blindly accept and inhabit as their own. These false realities constrict the expression of life by clouding an individual’s purpose and guiding them to live systematically. Too often individuals neglect to navigate their lives around their own wants, beliefs and values. Instead of making independent decisions, decisions are made based on the opinions or pressures from others, suppressing one’s authentic reality with societal norms. These norms and expectations set forth by authorities inadvertently transform an individual’s reality into an unoriginal, predetermined reality. In other words, there is an infinite number of aesthetically eccentric views, but we are given binoculars to only focus on what others want us to see. Unfortunately, these societal interferences are nearly unavoidable. Cathy Davidson’s essay, “Project Classroom Makeover,” presents how the enforcement of mundane standardization in American education systems leads to the decrease of original talents and creativity. Similarly, Ethan Watters’ essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” portrays the ways in which pharmaceutical companies attempt to standardize depression, shifting the reality of an entire culture, for the sake of their profit. Lastly, in “The Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks illustrates how reality differs between individuals by using stories from individuals with blindness. Evidently, reality is in the

In ‘The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, Ethan Watters exemplifies a unique phenomenon in his work on the idea of cultural change in Japan. Watters essay discusses how a nation was altered for the benefit of industry through the use of marketing. The stance that Watters takes in his essay makes abundantly clear the implications of marketing and its techniques which can be used to change the thinking of an entire country. Karen Ho’s essay “Biographies of Hegemony” focuses on how the leaders of investment bankers market the ‘success’ in investment banking in an attempt to make students get involved in the banking career. Both of these ideas of modifying a system are joined together by the subliminal nature of techniques used in marketing, a system evident in both Watters’ and Ho’s essays. Before scrutinizing how marketing influences different groups of people, we have to first understand the type of marketing used in these texts. Primarily, the notion of mega-marketing has to be understood— marketing in a way that changes the ‘total environment’ (every aspect of the environment, from the government to the public) of the country. This general idea of changing the environment is the most commonplace marketing strategy, and is evident in both texts from Ho and Watters. With this logic, one can understand how such an influential change can define the exact relationship between investment bankers and ivy league students.

In the ever-expanding world today, consumers are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the ploys of mass media advertising and pharmaceutical companies alike. Ethan Watters in “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” delves into the dangers of the globalization of a mentality for depression that seeks to transcend cultural values and traditions completely. Pharmaceutical companies, proponents of globalization, aim to eliminate the social and natural confines of a disease like depression, and instead, establish a medical model that is rigidly enforced through marketing and challenging existing cultural norms. Drug corporations continually bombard the general public with drugs that can cure ailments that supposedly afflict them, even if they are not indeed suffering from them. Therefore, a question arises, how much of what we perceive of the world around us is truly accurate and untainted by external influences? On the surface, corporations present themselves as benefactors of society working for the grace of the people; in reality, they are after the mighty dollar and strive to exploit new markets for product distribution. Every culture is unique in its explanatory reasoning for various circumstances and events that occur in the population, ranging from mental health to a general outlook on life. It is a travesty that cultures undergo unnecessary changes that can alter their very nature for the sake of monetary gain. Since cultural background shapes the conception of the

In this paragraph, I will be presenting a counter argument as if antidepressants are really helping our culture. I will be using Robert Whitaker's point of view of how our society is overmedicating mental illness. I am using Whitaker as source of information because source is well-written and organized. Robert Whitaker is a journalist and author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. Whitaker states that antidepressants are overprescribed in America, harming those who do not need them. In fact, Researchers have proven that using medical substance don't improve behaviors. In the long run, using some sort of antidepressant can worsen the disease. Whitaker quotes "If 'wonder drugs'

Clinical depression is an illness that significantly affects the way someone feels; causing a persistent pessimistic mood. There are two main types of depression; post trauma and clinical deposition. This medical condition is often accompanied by a range of other physical and psychological symptoms that can interfere with a person’s everyday life; affecting 6% of Australian adults every year. Symptoms for depression include sleeping pattern disturbances, loss of motivation and interest, feeling worthless or guilty, anxiety and impaired concentration. There are a few ways that this depressive illness can be caused: reaction to a distressing situation like loss or stress; part of an illness such

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

Media serves as a dictator, almost forcing society to shape around the brainwashing effect of advertisement. Society shields itself behind a thin wall they call individualism. They promote everyone being individuals and thinking for themselves when in reality, it’s the media who is lurking over the shoulder of society, whispering the rights and wrongs in the way we think and act. It’s the effect of media on society that sets that rulebook for what is considered the “well-being” of a person, both physically and emotionally. Ethan Watters supports this idea through his narrative, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” (512-532). He explains how Western society has been imposing on the culture of

Humankind is always making improvements. Fire was discovered for warmth, and now humans have heaters that keep them even warmer. The shadows told people what time of the day it was, and now it can be found out instantly by looking at phones or watches. Many innovations have a positive impact on humans. However, there are some cases where it is not, or at least there isn’t a black-or-white categorization for it. These ideas can be seen through the close reading of the essays “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” by Ethan Watters, which focuses on the progress of the company GlaxoSmithKline spreading their antidepressants, and “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” by Michael Moss, which focuses on the progress of the quality

Options #2, 6 and, 10 combined seem to be the most effective and efficient way out of the depression of the thirties. As option #2 proposes, government should support business from the tax money. Given that such solution would affect the poor, the only way to minimize the damage to the lower class would be to also run a deficit budget, which would allow both: to pump money into the economy, and not completely forget about the needs of the poor. Given that, the poor people and the middle class, unlike the business owners, build up the majority of the constituent body, any president whose goal is to be reelected, strives to become popular and gain support in these circles, by fighting unemployment

The purpose of this advertising poster is to raise awareness about a serious social issue, depression. The advertisement was designed with the intention of constructing a message of depression being unable to be seen through someone, hence it goes unnoticed majority of the time. Victims are often perceived happy on the outside, but looks can be deceiving. The target audience is aimed at todays’ society specifically from adolescents to adults ranging from both genders

Depression is more than just a feeling of sadness; it can easily gain control of an individual’s life if these feelings continue.