The seats were packed at the first keynote speaker\u2019s lecture on manic depression in America at the University of Alaska Southeast\u2019s Power & Privilege Symposium on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
Andrew James Archer, a licensed clinical social worker and trained psychotherapist, talked to the audience about bipolar disorder, otherwise known as manic depression, and its relationship with biology, industry and culture. Archer was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his early 20s, and he wrote about his experience in his memoir \u201cPleading Insanity\u201d and took a biological approach to understanding the disorder. In recent years, he has started to explore the relationship between cultural and economic forces with mood disorders, and not just the biological side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe critique is that in western culture, especially America\u2019s culture, we tend to believe that a person is their brain, that the mind is a manifestation of the brain,\u201d Archer said. \u201cI think that perspective tends to empower, like I said – psychiatry, pharmaceutical companies, a cure with biological agents \u2026 but the problem with that perspective is that it tends to eliminate culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Archer brought up the issue of globalization, and how technology connects us all now in an unprecedented way, which he said in a follow-up after his presentation can bring about a \u201cmanic stress\u201d to uphold our digital representations of ourselves as we treat ourselves as \u201cmini-corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are exporting this idea of what it means to be human. Why this is problematic is because it deemphasizes culture and local understandings of illness,\u201d Archer explained by focusing on the biochemical component of mood disorders, the sufferer can escape stigma, or at least that was the idea behind these movements, he said. But doing so removes the other factors at play that leads to these disorders. <\/p>\n
Archer did a quick trace of the how pharmaceutical companies and the understanding of mood disorders has changed over the last several decades. People understood mood disorders to be caused by cultural and environmental factors, Archers said, but in recent decades the pendulum swung to focus heavily on biological causes of mood disorders and biological treatments of disorders through drugs; this, he noted, is a highly profitable industry for drug companies and the rates of people using these drugs have increased, even in children.<\/p>\n
Archer made the case for people to stop treating the symptoms of these disorders but go after the root causes of them; while some may have roots in biology, many roots can come from society.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think all of us have different brains but for the most part we\u2019re all pretty similar. The diseases we should probably be focusing on as a society are racism, xenophobia, misogyny, sexism and not these pathologies that are really products of that activity going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Archer\u2019s own case, he recognizes the traumatic past of both his grandparents, how his father had manic depression, and in his early 20s Archer was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He suggested that perhaps this had to do with transgenerational trauma.<\/p>\n
Archer referenced the work by anthropologist Emily Martin and the ties she noted between mania and economics.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe made this tie-in between mood disorders and specifically the idea of mania and bipolar disorder followed by depressive lows – that these highs and lows seem to be a part of contemporary life,\u201d Archer said, displaying a timeline marking big financial collapses like the Great Depression and the 2008 stock market crash, and spikes in mood disorders during those times. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think of financial markets, when you have a boom in the market, it\u2019s sort of like a manic high in that it\u2019s predictably followed by a low or recession.\u201d <\/p>\n
To summarize Martin\u2019s ideas, he said, mania and depression do not just come from the individual but are also products of society and capitalism. <\/p>\n
To further illustrate this idea, Archer presented a graph to the audience of developed countries where one line represented the amount of mood disorders and the other the level of income inequality in that country. Near the upper right hand of the graph sat the U.S. beating every other country for income inequality and a high number of people diagnosed with mood disorders. He drew attention to the country sitting at the bottom left side of the graph: Japan. The reasons, he said in a follow-up with the Empire, is that the Japanese people and other eastern countries have a different cultural perspective than the U.S., which has the American Dream, the idea to transcend previous generations in prosperity. Also, Japan has less income inequality and thus less manic stress.<\/p>\n
He told the Empire that he didn\u2019t bring a lot of hard data beyond some statistics and the works of a few others in his field because the relationship between economics and mood disorders is still relatively new. But while understudied, from the correlations he has seen so far through his own studies and work as a therapist, it\u2019s one that should be more closely examined. <\/p>\n
Archer suggested people interested in these subjects read Ethan Watters\u2019 book \u201cCrazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche\u201d and Emily Martin\u2019s \u201cBipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture.\u201d He recommended for everyone to practice mental self-care and mindfulness, and to remember to unplug themselves from the internet, especially before going to sleep, and get at least 7-8 hours of sleep. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe line between illness and health is really economic and not so much biological,\u201d Archer said at the close of his presentation. \u201cWe must remember that there is always an existential element to a person suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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