Western values 'are causing mental illness'

[andrewducker]

THE rapid spread of Western business practices in Japan has causedwidespread mental illness and is responsible for a deepeningdemographic crisis, government officials say.

A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers — particularly those in their thirties — to mental turmoil. “People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns,” he said. “When people worked in teams they were happier.”

From here.

I'm not entirely convinced, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Anyone got any links on what keeps people sane, and how society does exactly the opposite?

Comments

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Globalisation bad. From personal experience.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262541467?v=glance

the above book - culture and subjective well being - does what it says on the tin. Its main conclusion about Japan is that unlike the west (which is an idiocentric society) Japan has always been an allocentric society ie the locus of personal well being is located in their particpiation in the group/collective. So it would make sense that importing idiocentric values intto an allocentric culture will cause problems. Whether this is anything more than adding fancy labels to the basic insight you quote is questionable; but its nice to have the fancy labels. Plus its a good book in that it has collected a series of empirical, trans-national, contemporary and differential studies into well being and its construction in different societies.

[taromazzy.livejournal.com]

anomie is a terrible thing.

[balthial.livejournal.com]

Bullshit. I think Japanese working men have emotional problems because they work too hard and never see their wives. Japanese women have a lot of education (which lowers birth rates), families are expected to raise kids in a way which is expensive and incredibly stressful for the mother. In Japan, the single life can be good but the married life is usually pretty bad.

That's my impression from studying a lot of Japanese culture. The birth rate was low well before business practices started "westernizing". Less job security and more inequality arn't helping anything, sure, but blaming those trends on "westernization" is awfully convient for the Japanese government.