Are there more Crazy People in some Countries than in Others?

by Tom Kando

Can it be said that there are more crazy/mentally ill people in one society than in another - for example in America than in the Netherlands?

With all the bad news from America these days - mass shootings, Donald Trump suggesting that we try Lysol to cure the coronavirus, etc. - some of my European friends are beginning to wonder whether this country has lost its senses. 

It’s clear that our president is mentally ill. But what about the society at large? Can one society be more mentally ill than another? I have a PhD in Social Psychology (U. Of Minnesota). So this question interests me.

To begin with, we need to recognize that “mental illness” is both physical and cultural.

Going by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) of the American Psychiatric Association, it is obvious that many of the listed mental disorders are rooted in neuro-chemical imbalances and/or damage to the nervous system. These are organic disorders, for example organic psychosis and dementia.
However, many “mental illnesses” are functional. For example bipolarity, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. These have no demonstrable physiological basis.

What complicates matters is that, historically, many conditions which have been labeled as mental illnesses have consisted of violations of cultural norms. For example, until 1980, hysteria was a mental illness, and so was homosexuality until 1987.

Thomas Szasz was the best-known spokesman for the view that the label “mental Illness” is a punitive label used by the establishment and by the authorities against deviant members of society, i.e. against those who violate dominant norms. (See his The Myth of Mental Illness).

Granted that Szasz was an extremist. His categorical generalizations about”the myth” of mental illness have been refuted.

Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that there is both a physical AND a cultural aspect to mental illness. All societies have cultural norms, and all societies punish norm violators. These violations are often labeled as “mental illnesses.” Behaviors that are so labeled and punished in one society are often accepted as normal by other cultures. For example, public nudity (including public breast feeding) might be labeled as the disease of “exhibitionism” in a Christian society, but accepted as normal in a sub-Saharan culture (Exhibitionism is still listed as a diagnosable mental illness in the DSM).

The notion that what is normal in one culture may be viewed as mental illness in another is an axiom which students learn in Psych. 101.

In addition, a central feature of mental illness is that it consists of or leads to SELF-DESTRUCTIVE behavior.

The mentally ill individual often does not act in his own best interest.

Take suicide.
In war-like cultures such as ancient Rome, World-War-Two Japan and ISIS, suicide (“falling on your sword,” harakiri, kamikaze, suicide bombings, etc.) has been considered an acceptable form of warfare and the proper response to military defeat. The Japanese troops fighting in the Pacific preferred suicide over imprisonment. American soldiers preferred life over death, even as prisoners. Was the Japanese suicidal proclivity a form of mental illness? The DSM lists “suicidal behavior disorder” as a diagnostic entity. However, it would be wrong to assert that that there was more mental illness (suicidal tendencies) among the Japanese soldiers than among the Americans. The difference was CULTURAL.

Or was it?

That is the question.

The thing is: If one were to assert that there is more mental illness in one society than in another (say, more in Japan than in the US in 1943, or more in America than in Holland today) this can mean the following three things:

1. More people suffer from organic neuro-chemical mental illnesses in one society than in the other. Maybe due to more drug abuse, or some other chemical cause.

2. There is more deviant behavior - violation of cultural norms - in one society than in the other. In other words, less conformity.

3. Can one culture be more insane than another? I.o.w.: can an entire culture be infected by some form of mental illness?

Interpretation #1, above makes no sense: There is no evidence that the Japanese suffered more from organic mental illnesses than did Americans in the 1940s.

Interpretation #2 is equally absurd: If anything, there was far greater conformity in Japan than in the US at that time, to the point of brainwashing, especially in the military.

Interpretation #3 is the most interesting: Consider the current pandemic, and the way different countries are reacting to it: In America, the federal government’s response has been shameful. However, many of the states and millions of individuals have responded valiantly, so far. The numbers (rates of per capita infections and deaths, etc.) indicate that America is somewhere in the middle of the pack at this time.

It is clear that the occupant of the White House is mentally ill. But it is not clear that the response of the American people to the pandemic has been more insane than that of most other countries.

The prime example of an entire culture going bezerk occurred in Germany between 1933 and 1945. It spread to surrounding countries, many of which had vigorous fascist parties, and willingly collaborated with the Holocaust. A large proportion (a majority?) of Germans followed Hitler to the bitter end, against their obvious self-interest. Germany committed suicide.

The mentality of the Japanese people during World War Two is another example of mass mental illness, as is that of North Koreans and many other indoctrinated (“brainwashed”) people throughout history.

It is possible that a majority of Americans will come to accept the mass death caused by the corona virus as necessary in the interest of the “economy” (jobs, to be sure, but above all Wall Street). Were a majority of Americans to take this route and re-elect Donald Trump, thus choosing Capitalism and plutocracy over human life, superstition and falsehood over science, short-term gratification over long-term solutions, then we could say that America has become insane. Its behavior would then exhibit all the self-destructive tendencies usually associated with mental illness, not unlike Germany’s attack of mental illness in the 1930s and 1940s.

© Tom Kando 2020;All Rights Reserved

  leave comment here