modern culture/stress/depression/mental health... something

August 17, 2013 4:32 PM

I'm sure I saw a post here a while back about modern culture/American culture/the recession/something related to that and its relationship to mental illness. It implied that American culture or Western culture or something like that caused mental illness. I've looked through related tags and can't find it; it's possible that it was a comment and not a FPP. Does anyone remember this?
posted by NoraReed to MetaFilter-Related at 4:32 PM (20 comments total)

Do you think you saw it on the Blue or the Green?
posted by carsonb at 4:54 PM on August 17, 2013

And can you be any more specific than 'a while'?
posted by carsonb at 4:55 PM on August 17, 2013

Was it The Americanization of Mental Illness?
posted by dhartung at 4:57 PM on August 17, 2013

Finally, could it be this post?

A gene variant associated with serotonin transport (STG) , and normally associated with depression is strangely more prevalent, but also less likely to induce depression in collectivistic East Asian cultures. The study took data from 29 countries, and found a consistent trend towards this same genetic variant being strongly associated with episodes of major depression in Western cultures.

posted by carsonb at 4:57 PM on August 17, 2013

It was on the Blue. I think it was recent-- like a few months recent-- but I regularly think something I saw on the blue "a few months ago" was as far back as 2010. But it's not either of those posts.
posted by NoraReed at 5:00 PM on August 17, 2013

Funny side-note: The googling I did gave back that post as the first listing, and the link from the googs to the post had the poster's name where the title text usually goes in the URL. The post itself had "Genes that cause depression?" as the title. Reading down the comments, it looks like mathowie fixed the title from the poster's username to the genes question. That google cache works fast! And persistently!
posted by carsonb at 5:00 PM on August 17, 2013

Another possible result:

"How, I wonder, can a young woman who has grown up in this harsh environment, waking up early to fetch water, cook, clean, farm till late in the day, be suffering from depression? ... People don't get depressed in Nigeria." 09/12
posted by carsonb at 5:05 PM on August 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

There was some more recent discussion of culture-bound syndromes (which is the term of art here you will find most fruitful) in the genital theft thread last March.

On preview: similar to carsonb's, but maybe less right?
posted by dhartung at 5:07 PM on August 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's not either of those.

Maybe I saw it elsewhere. It's possible I'm just assuming that everything I read on the internet that is insightful is from metafilter when in fact that is only true of ~75% of them.
posted by NoraReed at 5:24 PM on August 17, 2013

Perhaps you are recalling a semi-recent FPP about a doctor trying to figure out what to do with obese patients, which ended with a individual using several comments to delineate how marxist-capitalist alienation drives obesity and mental illness?
posted by daveliepmann at 5:46 PM on August 17, 2013

...that is, this post about Karen Hitchcock's article Fat City, with Miko our instructor in Marxist analysis?
posted by daveliepmann at 5:48 PM on August 17, 2013

Was it this one, which talks about the sometimes prolonged prodrome of schizophrenia in the US, and one of the links of which describes a very different typical course of schizophrenia in some African societies, where an acute phase lasts for a couple of weeks and then the sufferer recovers completely?
posted by jamjam at 7:42 PM on August 17, 2013

Possibly this comment I made earlier in the year about the emotional toll the extreme "by your bootstraps" mindset can take?
posted by scody at 7:51 PM on August 17, 2013

It isn't any of those, but they're all super-insightful and I missed them the first time around, so I'm still glad you linked to them.
posted by NoraReed at 8:01 PM on August 17, 2013

Was it The Suicide Epidemic?
posted by mogget at 9:12 PM on August 17, 2013

Possibly something from this thread?
posted by polymodus at 1:44 AM on August 18, 2013

Not sure if this article was on the Blue, but was it Living in America Will Make You Insane, Literally?
posted by none of these will bring disaster at 9:02 AM on August 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

That is the article I was thinking of! I must've seen it elsewhere. Thank you all!!
posted by NoraReed at 9:04 AM on August 18, 2013

Heh, I'm actually wondering if there's been a mental illness thread on the blue that didn't mention this idea...
posted by en forme de poire at 10:26 PM on August 18, 2013

That's what i was thinking too. people love intricate versions of that "america is poison on the earth and this is why" skit.

I'm neither endorsing or refuting it, it just seems to be a really good way to get slapped on the back for being brave on the internet in general and people seem to freaking eat it up.
posted by emptythought at 11:14 AM on August 19, 2013 [3 favorites]