[Steelfish]

Racist?

"In some Southeast Asian cultures, men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia; men in the region also suffer from koro, which is characterized by the debilitating certainty that their genitals are retracting into their bodies."

[HiTech RedNeck]

The US is the 900 pound gorilla of western medicine, though this global clout may change with Bummercare.

At any rate, it's unlikely the pill to cure amok will be invented here.

[worst-case scenario]

Seems like that line is simply stating a fact, that in these places, there are certain illnesses recognized that aren’t recognized elsewhere.

[hinckley buzzard]

These indigenous conditions have been well known for ages. It is no discovery that as other people become westernized they will adopt the same maladaptive responses to stress. We have seen it with American Indians as well. One condition which has seemed to pervade across cultures however is depression. It knows no national or cultural boundaries, although incidence rates vary.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago;
but now that the lawyers have got to cutting every gallows
rope and picking every prison lock with it, it is become
a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging
its sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude that
the safest plan was to never claim to have it until they
came by it legitimately.
The very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently
try to save by the insanity subterfuge ought to laugh the
plea out of the courts, one would think.

MARK TWAIN
- “Unburlesquable Things,” The Galaxy Magazine, July 1870

[a fool in paradise]

Bush Derangement Syndrome when global epidemic last decade and Hollywood was there to help spread it.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

"men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia"

Hand them a lirpa and let 'em go at it. It's the only cure.

[fightinJAG]

I didn’t find anything the least racist about this article.

The only objection I found was to language that the West was “insisting” on globalizing its concepts of mental illness. The fact that something is occurring, quite organically, does not mean it is being “insisted” upon. Much of what the article (with good reason) bemoans is simply occurring because that’s the way things work, not because the Wester ME field sets out to make the rest of the world capitulate to its approach.

I found this article excellent and thought-provoking. Thanks for posting.