Depression In Japan (ebook)

Argumento de Depression In Japan (ebook)

"In this beautifully nuanced book, Kitanaka documents the burgeoning of Japanese depression over the past decade. In portraying this phenomenon, she deftly draws readers into the intertwined worlds of pressure-cooker work environments, individuals suffering deep malaise who are frequently suicidal, and the compassionate but at times conflicted practice of Japanese psychiatry. Suffering individuals are medicated, but psychiatrists, exquisitely sensitive to the oppressive 'forces' of society, also politicize depression."--Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death

"This is an important ethnographic, cultural, and historical account of a crucial topic in society. Illustrative and compelling."--Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University

"Fully engaged with the scholarly literature, and steeped in detail and description, this exemplary book is clearly the product of great care and careful listening and observation. With its high quality, simplicity, and eloquence, it is bound to become the book on depression in Japan."--Adriana Petryna, University of Pennsylvania

"The management of depression in Japan differs markedly from treatments elsewhere, and this book draws out historical examples of the ways in which the nation has imagined and treated sadness and insanity. The author's findings do not conform to the familiar narratives of medicalization, in which social issues are depoliticized. Cogent and persuasive, the book offers a sophisticated analysis of a complex problem, making a major contribution to the field of medicine and mental health in Japan, and to medical anthropology and modern psychiatry."--Amy Borovoy, Princeton University

Co-Winner of the 2013 Frances Hsu Prize, Society for East Asian Anthropology

"[C]ompelling and challenging work. . . . [T]his is a thought-provoking book that should be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and clinicians."--Susan L. Burns, Journal of Japanese Studies

"Depression in Japan sets a high methodological and analytic standard for pursuing answers to vital questions."--Kalman Applbaum, Anthropological Quarterly

"Medical anthropology, with its propensity to theoretise and problemise issues and refer endlessly to other work and concepts with which the reader will not be familiar, is for many outsiders almost as impenetrable as Japanese psychiatry. Putting the two together should be a recipe for disaster, but in Junko Kitanaka's hands, this book is instead a triumph, perhaps even a classic."--David Healy, Times Higher Education0List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi Chapter One: Introduction: Local Forces of Medicalization 1

Part One: Depression in History 19
Chapter Two: Reading Emotions in the Body: The Premodern Language of Depression 23
Chapter Three: The Expansion of Psychiatry into Everyday Life 40
Chapter Four: Pathology of Overwork or Personality Weakness?: The Rise of Neurasthenia in Early-Twentieth-Century Japan 54
Chapter Five: Socializing the "Biological" in Depression: Japanese Psychiatric Debates about Typus Melancholicus 67

Part Two: Depression in Clinical Practice 83 Chapter Six: Containing Reflexivity: The Interdiction against Psychotherapy for Depression 89
Chapter Seven: Diagnosing Suicides of Resolve 107
Chapter Eight: The Gendering of Depression and the Selective Recognition of Pain 129
Part Three: Depression in Society 151
Chapter Nine: Advancing a Social Cause through Psychiatry: The Case of Overwork Suicide 155
Chapter Ten: The Emergent Psychiatric Science of Work: Rethinking the Biological and the Social 174
Chapter Eleven: The Future of Depression: Beyond Psychopharmaceuticals 193

References 201 Index 231