In 1999, the Japanese government began approving the use of SSRIs, those antidepressant medications including Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil that had years earlier triggered the Prozac Revolution in the United States. Before then, depression was not commonly diagnosed in Japan, and it was argued that the infrequency was due to cultural factors. Since 1999, however, rates of diagnosis have surged and depression has garnered increasing attention in the popular media. As a result, the mainstream conception of depression is shifting from that of a serious mental illness affecting a small number of individuals to a less severe condition from which virtually anyone can suffer. In short, depression is becoming normalized.
Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in clinical settings in Tokyo from 2001 to 2003, this dissertation argues that Japan is fertile ground for the normalization of depression and that depression is increasingly resonating because of its ability to encapsulate the pressures and insecurity that are dominating the lives of many individuals. This normalization represents a medicalized response to a variety of novel stresses especially layoffs, financial insecurity, and overwork that many citizens are facing in the new millennium, with many of these stresses stemming from Japans ongoing economic restructuring. Depression is emerging as a means of discussing the impact of these stresses on the lives of working adults, especially men. The increasing focus on depression, therefore, represents changes in social experience and the increasing recognition of those changes.
By showing the degree to which the emerging understandings of depression in Japan are embedded in the socio-economic context and by comparing Japans depression boom with Americas Prozac Revolution, this dissertation examines depressions capacity to operate as an idiom of distress within which modes of personal suffering are imbricated with wider socio-economic forces.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12052005-230923 |
| Date | 07 July 2006 |
| Creators | Vickery, George Kendall |
| Contributors | Dr. Richard Scaglion, Dr. L. Keith Brown, Dr. Joseph S. Alter, Dr. Richard Smethurst |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12052005-230923/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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