In the Japanese society, where mental diseases are neither widely accepted nor recognized, pharmaceutical companies take advantage of the public’s lack of education by marketing through manipulation and deception.
*insert a smooth transition to tie Ethan Watters to thesis*
“Crazy Like Us” is Ethan Watters’ take on the fraudulent diagnosis of depression in Japan. His work focuses on the transition and efforts undertaken by pharmaceutical companies to market overseas the western-developed conceptions of the disease and its treatment for Japan. One would think that the transition and the imposition of the medications would be soundless, smooth, and an easy sell to a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates, only third to South Korea …show more content…
And what about suicide? Suicide, then, wasn’t largely linked to depression. Persuading the people of a whole society to seek treatment and medication for depression was the same as telling them that they should associate their own symptoms to a terrifying condition, which is a great feat in itself. So what 's the point? Why bother? This was due to two major reasons. Western altruism and profit. Many believed that the Japanese had sort of accepted the symptoms of depression as the norm because there was no recourse. It’s analogous to countries in the South America which have record breaking crime rates or Serbia with it’s through the roof smoking rates. Civilians have just expected and accepted the high rates and don’t think of them as problems anymore. These rates have simply just become the norms. But if the problem can be resolved, then there is no need for such …show more content…
The Japanese had sort of a negative inclination towards the disorder. This lead pharmaceuticals to go out of their way to change the public’s perception and attitude towards depression in order to create a more profitable market for their products. They went about doing this by seeded media coverage, full paged ad coverages, public educational campaigns, etc. But none were too convincing to entirely change the public’s view. Desperate to come up with a profit worthy phrase, marketers hit jackpot when they came up with the phrase “kokoro no kaze” which translated to “a cold of the
*insert a smooth transition to tie Ethan Watters to thesis*
“Crazy Like Us” is Ethan Watters’ take on the fraudulent diagnosis of depression in Japan. His work focuses on the transition and efforts undertaken by pharmaceutical companies to market overseas the western-developed conceptions of the disease and its treatment for Japan. One would think that the transition and the imposition of the medications would be soundless, smooth, and an easy sell to a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates, only third to South Korea …show more content…
And what about suicide? Suicide, then, wasn’t largely linked to depression. Persuading the people of a whole society to seek treatment and medication for depression was the same as telling them that they should associate their own symptoms to a terrifying condition, which is a great feat in itself. So what 's the point? Why bother? This was due to two major reasons. Western altruism and profit. Many believed that the Japanese had sort of accepted the symptoms of depression as the norm because there was no recourse. It’s analogous to countries in the South America which have record breaking crime rates or Serbia with it’s through the roof smoking rates. Civilians have just expected and accepted the high rates and don’t think of them as problems anymore. These rates have simply just become the norms. But if the problem can be resolved, then there is no need for such …show more content…
The Japanese had sort of a negative inclination towards the disorder. This lead pharmaceuticals to go out of their way to change the public’s perception and attitude towards depression in order to create a more profitable market for their products. They went about doing this by seeded media coverage, full paged ad coverages, public educational campaigns, etc. But none were too convincing to entirely change the public’s view. Desperate to come up with a profit worthy phrase, marketers hit jackpot when they came up with the phrase “kokoro no kaze” which translated to “a cold of the