[lit-ideas] Re: Mental Health and China
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:15:55 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 6/22/2005 4:11:18 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Mental Health and China
>
>
> On 2005/06/22, at 10:10, Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Is this because our lifestyles have translated to Chinese
> > lifestyles or is it that they used to not complain and just deal
> > with what life gave them?
> >
>
>
> Perhaps a bit of both. But "just deal with what life gave them"
> misses other possibilities. One is somatization, expressing distress
> through physical symptoms.
A.A. This sounds like mental illness to me. Everything I've heard about
China (all from reputable sources) tells me that the Chinese people, at
least in the villages, where most of the population resides, are not too
far from the characterization in Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (I'm speaking
of the movie, which no doubt is a sanitized version of reality). When half
the population (women) is so subjugated, children are sold into slavery and
so on, and most live at a subsistence level, mental health has to adapt
itself. The cities for now are made up of peasants streaming out of the
countryside creating cities literally almost overnight. I want to say that
their society will improve slowly as western values of "normal" slowly rub
off on the peasants, but I'm not in a mood for a beating so I won't say it.
Andy Amago
Another is turning to fortunetellers,
> geomancers, spirit mediums, and other traditional healers. To learn
> all about it, check out the work of Arthur Kleinman,
>
> http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/social_pages_kleinman.html
>
> John McCreery
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