[Aardwolf]

freud had to bat**** insane to even get a grasp on the mind. makes me question if the problem of fixing crazy people is even remotely compatible with the scientific method.

[hyperbole]The only thing Sigmund Freud was right was the significance of the libido )and I'm not even sure he made the logical connection between it and evolution). All of his other nonsensical stuff was the result of being a druggy.[/hyperbole]

[Kosh]

Actually I do, from my impressive overwhelming height as well as my foreign-ness.

[MP-Ryan]

It's about how mental illnesses are less biologically based than we tend to think they are. Not about how other people have different biology.

I wouldn't say less biologically-based.  The overwhelming evidence is that the majority of mental disorders have an organic basis - some kind of physical or chemical change in the brain.

What differs across cultures is how those changes manifest, are recognized, and understood by various populations.  Koro is a particularly well-documented case, but the underlying problem appears to be an anxiety disorder - it's symptoms just aren't recognized in Western culture because that's not one of the ways anxiety disorders tend to manifest here.  In all our great wisdom, we then classify it either as irrelevant (less so now than ever before), or as a different type of disorder.

The problem that the article refers to is that Western understanding of mental illness is being forced upon other cultures.  In some cases, this may be a good thing - mental illnesses are not always treated with compassion, and people suffering from them are often shunned, imprisoned, or killed.  Western society has made a reasonable attempt to curb those responses as a result of scientific understanding.  The problem is when we export our recognized symptoms of disorder to another culture, overwriting theirs.  Not only then does the disorder itself lose it's cultural understanding, but it may lose the cultural treatment and even increase the severity of the symptoms (as in the anorexia case).

The problem, as usual, is getting the biology and psychology of mental illness to fit together.  The biology of mental illness is quite similar across the board (near as we can tell with what cross-cultural and genetic studies that have been done, at any rate).  It's how the symptoms manifest and are understood by collective society that differs, and arguably calls for different methods of understanding and treatment by clinicians.  Funny thing about mental illness - unlike many diseases, treating the symptoms while virtually ignoring their cause can effectively relapse or even cure the illness - a rare case where mind over body actually works.

[iamzack]

I didn't mean not biologically based. Just less biologically based. In that (exactly what you said) the same problem manifests very differently based on environment.

[Kosh]

Kosh: sorry I missed your request. Try here or here for a couple randomly selected examples.

These are by no means definitive studies in the field, they're just what I came up with on a quick search. I'll hunt through my texts and my lab's papers to see if I can find any of the big ones.

In the second one the URL was broken and the first one was behind a paywall.

[General Battuta]

Haha, jeez. I always forget I'm on a lab connection.

[ssmit132]

Although I don't really have anything to add to this discussion at the moment, I have to say that the article was indeed an interesting and enlightening read.

[Kosh]

Haha, jeez. I always forget I'm on a lab connection.

Nice. Anyway, I generally agree with what MP-Ryan said.

[General Battuta]

Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.

[MP-Ryan]

Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.

Indeed.  It looked like zack might have taken the wrong interpretation of the article based on the initial comment (which is what I was clearing up), but as it turns out she got exactly the right idea.

So, just so nobody gets the wrong idea here - if you agree with me, you're agreeing with the original article (and the body of research to date, so it's probably best if you agree anyway )

[Kosh]

Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.

Part of how the article was presented didn't make it seem that way, espcially given the anti-science attitudes that often end up in the humanities.

[General Battuta]

Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.

Part of how the article was presented didn't make it seem that way, espcially given the anti-science attitudes that often end up in the humanities.

The article is written by a scientist.

Sorry - it mostly consists of interviews with scientists. The article is a plea for better science. More rigorous methodology.

[Kosh]

From the bottom of the article:

Ethan Watters lives in San Francisco. This essay is adapted from his book “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,” which will be published later this month by Free Press.

An earlier version of this article misstated the publisher of Ethan Watters's book. An earlier version of this article also misstated the name of the group National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Sorry if it is hard to tell whether or not he actually is a scientist from that.

[General Battuta]

Reread last post.

[Kosh]

I didn't catch your edit before posting.

Sorry - it mostly consists of interviews with scientists. The article is a plea for better science. More rigorous methodology.

Cherry picked, or representing the actual concensus? I'm not totally seeing how what Ryan said was in total agreement when the article says stuff like this:

The Western mind, endlessly analyzed by generations of theorists and researchers, has now been reduced to a batter of chemicals we carry around in the mixing bowl of our skulls.

[General Battuta]

The article does not say that this is wrong.

The article is entirely in agreement with MP-Ryan's view. You have even had the relevant passage quoted at you.

The article's concern is partly with research being conducted on non-representative samples, and partly on the important cognitive and social elements of how mental illness manifests.

Mental illness is mental and therefore has a mental component which is non-reducible to physical properties alone, just as the information content of a book is not reducible to atomic structures. This is not an argument against physicalism in neuroscience, it is a fundamental component of physicalism in neuroscience.

[Narvi]

What's the point of bring up stylistic nitpicks? This is how most articles like these are written. Just go with the actual content instead of the tone, dude.