Japan and Disaster

The most appropriate way to start off this week's blog is by extending my condolences to the Japanese families who have lost loved ones as a result of this week's earthquake and tsunami. I'd also like to express my hope for a full recovery of Japan in terms of both psychology and economics. Beyond these points, things get a little more complicated.

In case you aren't up to speed, there was a massive earthquake in Japan last Friday that measured a massive 8.9 on the Richter scale. It led to wreckage and huge tsunamis whose effects could be felt across the Pacific. Luckily, Japan's infrastructure is among the best in the world of its terms ability withstand earthquakes and tsunamis. Unfortunately, not every death was preventable, and around 10,000 dead are expected to be found, even as rescue attempts continue. That's the more human side of the disaster. Things get even more complicated from there.

As a result of the earthquake, Japan's economy has suffered a set back. Of greater immediate concern is the potential for the meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Fukushima. The earthquake prevented the plant from functioning, but the funny thing about nuclear power is even after you've stopped generating electricity with it you still need electricity to keep the fuel rods cool or they'll start exploding. They have. Although voices of reason point out that the language of disaster surrounding the potential catastrophe is a bit over-the-top, as comparisons to Chernobyl or the risk of a meltdown are overblown, there is a chance radiation will contaminate the plant's surroundings, and generate backlash to nuclear energy on whole.

Of course when people here about a tragedy of this proportion they want to help out. The US began relief efforts, taking advantage of its military presence in Japan, immediately. Private donations have also started flowing in. Here's a list of good options if you're interested in donating. And here's an article you to not spend your money foolishly.

One of the most interesting things when a disaster like this strikes is how it's covered in the media. And even if it seems a little soon to be analyzing coverage of this disaster, it's worth delving in to. Personally, I have found most interesting the tension between the way the media covers disasters in third world countries like Haiti or Indonesia as opposed to coverage of a disaster in first world Japan. In the same news report, reporters will praise Japan's excellent, state-of-the-art technology it invests in to effectively minimize the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis, and in the next breath use alarming rhetoric, calling the event a catastrophe or warning of a nuclear meltdown. This seems a bit silly and overblown. If any country in the world is prepared for a natural disaster, it is probably Japan. The country is natural resource-poor, inherently vulnerable, and culturally conservative in terms of risk taking. Even if reporters think sympathetic disaster coverage will sell or generate needed goodwill, it seems like a bit of a lie to make this story fit the traditional disaster mold. This doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the Japanese who lost their lives, but it seems like we squander a potential learning opportunity when even successful disaster response is spun as being part of a catastrophe. A blog I stumbled across spoke about the limitations of language in the face of this tragedy. While it certainly is difficult to put language to work to express the scope of human suffering, perhaps we should instead employ language to speak about the lessons we can learn from Japan's response to a natural disaster, instead of repeating the obvious. 10,000 isn't 400,000 and the reason for that isn't dumb luck.

Update: Two days later Paul Pillar of the National Interest has made a similar point.

Japan and Mental Health

In English class we've been reading Hamlet. For those of you unfamiliar with the work, please take a brief primer on Western culture, and then return to this post. The rest of you will know that one of the major in themes in Hamlet is that of sanity. What constitutes insanity? How do we tell whether someone is insane or not? Where is the line? Is Hamlet sane? What about Ophelia?

As part of studying these issues, our class has talked a lot about whether and how being crazy or mentally unhealthy is culture-dependent. Western culture has defined sanity based on everything from balances in the four humors (fluids inside the body) to an individual's ability to maximize his or her happiness. Across time insanity has always been outside the norm. Sanity is normal, the insane are not. This leads to shifting definitions and treatments of insanity not only from time to time, but also from culture to culture in the same time period. One of the cultures that coexists with the American culture is that of Japan.

There are many who would tell you that Japanese culture as a whole is just plain insane. In writing this post I'll take a leap of faith in assuming that the Japanese do not see their culture the same way. The more interesting question is whether differing culture norms translate into different visions of insanity.

Rather than finding other cultures' models of mental illness harder to understand, it seems as if the opposite is coming true. In an excellent blog post summarizing a book, Christopher Lane, a professor at Northwestern, contends that America is essentially exporting it's ideas of insanity to other countries, including Japan. I encourage the reader to read that whole post, as it eloquently summarizes ideas I can only hope to re-summarize here.

The most interesting anecdote in the post is about Japan, so I'll expound on it. It's about drugs that treat depression. Conditions that could be labeled depression exist in most people in most societies. It's usually a matter of how an individual deals with inevitable sadness, and what society has to say about how much we should pity ourselves for how sad we feel. I would even postulate that depression symptoms fall under a type of negative Barnum Effect (things like horoscopes can apply to everyone because they're so vague), as anyone reading symptoms of depression can in some way connect. GlaxoSmithKline took advantage of depression's marketability in exporting the illness to Japan. Lane relates the story of how an aggressive marketing push corresponding with Paxil becoming available in Japan essentially created a mental health epidemic. The company made people sick to sell drugs to them.

This example is one of many related to Westerners' propensities to use their labels where they don't apply, leading to explosions in diagnoses of illnesses like PTSD in other countries. The question isn't whether symptoms that could constitute illness in a Western sense exist, but rather whether medicalization of these diseases according to an American model is the best solution. Telling people they're sick is a great way to get them to buy treatment, but probably not the best way to get them healthy.