Just as American culture is homogenizing the world, with respect to everything from movies to junk food, so to is it globalizing the human mind itself. In his new book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,science writer Ethan Watters shows that we are not only changing the way the world understands and treats mental illness, but that we are actually trying to redefine the symptoms of others to fit into our own pharmacologically driven solutions. Good for big pharma, bad for diversity and human compassion.
My conversation with Ethan Watters: