i think it seems that the current polarization of african-americans and whites in the great polarization between african-american awaits in the society. although i think there's great potential for those two groups, whites and african-americans, in some form in the future. >> thank you so much. we've been talking with robert and more, author of, they always

said i would marry a white girl. coming to grips with race in america. thank you for having me. [applause] >> i'm hooked on "the daily show" for a wednesday. i'm representing to be done to ensure it's going to happen. i've got only my unfunny material. you'll have to wait for wednesday for the real part. for the next 33 minutes onto introducing my favorite ideas in my new book, "crazy like us." this is my fourth book. i think i can backer of the first two books with this desperate desire to look to the

smart world when i wrote the last book "urban tribes" i wanted to be popular. and for this one, think a little bit of a more competent place. i give up the idea that the anonymous leader would finally start to making up making up the idea certainly that i would write anything but a popular vote. the book in itself i think it's given any ideas if there's any idea about how to write a popular book which is sort of sad. i was going to think that once i managed a mental term, i was reading sort of an intellectual heading for a couple of years. the feel of a cross-cultural psychiatry who study how different conceptions of the mind in different cultures affect in shape human experience. it's really a gold mine of remarkable ideas. and it took me around the world twice into the into the presence of some of the most amazing psychiatrist anthropologists in

the most remarkable thinkers that i've met. and, by the way, we have a special guest tonight who i'll introduced at the end. angelique limitless people tonight. there is some points i remember thinking -- assembling strand of research of this book i really had to sort of keep my mouth from literally dropping open of the things that i found in things that i was told. i'm very proud of this book. i really would like you to buy. last [laughter] it's not intended to be the last word on anything. it's a conversation about how culture affects the human mind. and i would like you all to be part of the conversation.

and i'd like to book to be part of the conversation as well. i just like for michael books, especially if their arguments stand the clouds in the area of ideas and sweeping statements and generalities the solution called as a reader. i'm a magazine writer by training. and i like the grounded story. so i had this notion for this book, but i remain to be seen when i started whether i could bring it down into the stories and stories of people on the researchers said that the ats could be carried now by general arguments, but by little stories. and i played the first moment when i realized i had a book. i traveled up to mcgill university for a magazine piece on a different topic with my manager set a meeting with professor larry and he was the department of cross-cultural studies there. and he was a very big man in this field and it took a couple

hours of time to talk to me. internet talk you begin to tell me a remarkable story about how his invited to an academic conference in japan in 2001. andy accepted the invitation. it's not uncommon for drug companies to sponsor academic sponsors. this wasn't a run-of-the-mill academic event, something else is out. on the first clue he had was the fact that he got a first-class plane ticket to japan, to kyoto for this academic experience. he got the hotel was one that was a very exclusive hotel, you know, his bath was strong, is the presidential suite. the bath was strewn with rose petals. it was a platter of fruit on the contents of that was so exotic that it could only identify the mangoes. and he told me, this was sort of

the word and gecko treatment. he wondered what i did to deserve this. so he replied he made a very big idea that he could sell the paxil to japan and there was no guarantees that doctors would prescribe the drug. the country did have a clinical diagnosis of depression, but it was much different than our idea of depression. it is considered a rare mental illness and considered extremely severe come something along the lines of how we think of schizophrenia. and that the kiddo meaning he talked about how the illness shaped experience. to make paxil hit in japan it would not be enough to corner the market on this endogenous depression. their objective was to change the most fundamental level for japanese understanding of sadness and depression and short were trying to figure out how to market a disease.

and to have the best chance of shifting the japanese public perception about to many depression, he needed a deep and sophisticated understanding of how his beliefs had taken shape over time and this is why he came to realize the company had invited him and his colleagues and treated them like such royalty. he needed to solve the cultural public that might be worth billions of dollars. and indeed, they picked the right guy. kurt mayer knew better than perhaps anyone in the world about depression and the malleable in response to messages that could be exported from one culture to another. what culture could reshape how one can redraw the line and marketing moral behavior and internal states from those considered pathological. and i have to say, you know, talking to him until later on turn a writer how we gave the great details of the bath in the

credenza. i really wanted to make sure he understood what he was saying and i said, how exquisite wasn't in this meeting with these last-minute clime people they were interested in changing the mood in japan. he is a categorically and i quote, his very specific. what i was representing with the multinational pharmaceutical organization working height to find itself. their first reaching effects in changing the cultural conceptions on how people conduct their everyday lives and this is happening on a global scale. where upended long-held cultural beliefs about the meaning of illness and healing. and at that moment, i literally quite literally got the chills up my spine, partly because of the thing that he was telling me think so remarkable and partly because i knew i could write about a book about this topic. if i could be one of the first people out with the story, to

trace these cultural trends, to show how this happens over time, that this would be a book worth writing, spending two years writing, or spending time getting up and talking about. so there was the thesis. america then closing not only the treatment and categorization of mental illness but the expressions of this illness themselves. the consensus idea that a beliefs and expectations about mental illness influence the forms of those helmets and sometimes their course now. and this often becomes clearest to people living in america when you look back at his stereo and european and victorian england. you see women, say for instance, manifesting all forms of anorexia -- hysteria like hysteria like paralysis. and this is not women faking the symptoms at all. this is a matter that the troubled unconscious mind learns

to speak the language of its time. but it looks to culture in this very subtle way. the signals are not always obvious but it looks to culture to understand how to express its distress. and there's language in every culture and every time that has a symptom pool, a set of symptoms that allows the person to express the distress and it changes over time. so i didn't want to read a book just about blacks or in japan and i looked for other examples to demonstrate this idea. i modeled after another but that i very much liked. and you got a free glass of wine if you can think of the book as i describe it with you. it was one really interesting counterintuitive idea around for long chapters, long essay chapters to describe it. and that's really not fair description because there's really not enough -- to free glass of wine.

so it was desire which it does a very enjoyable book to read them i love the way those long chapters aloud my component to sort of go in and out of these ideas and look for different expressions and ideas. and i happen to happened to read unanimous technical pollen and it was edited by a friend of mine named paul test so i got to see the creation of that book. if i were looking for these other ideas. and once you're inside a given scientific discipline, it's very easy to follow the trail. everyone knows who the big players are. the very early on i found a researcher who was prominent in this field named finley to find a prize of anorexia in hong kong. and i quickly determined that would be one of the four chapters because it was a very interesting story. something humming in the middle 1990's in hong kong that changed the presentation of anorexia. only have been studying anorexia before that. but it was a very weird disease

in hong kong and didn't look like the american form. he didn't have fat phobia, body dysmorphia, didn't affect the population that it considered in america. as a poor population, more remote from the cities. and i had all these particular cultural meanings in japan. it was making another really interesting papers trying to figure what those minions were, that something shifted. and one of the things i discovered in writing this book is that sometimes the lives and often the death by single individuals and patients can shape cultural experience as an conceptions of elements. such is the story of a young anorexia, 14-year-old named charlotte sheeting was that from a hong kong street smarts what i think was the change in the region's belief about anorexia. and so crucial is her story to this book into the hong kong deception of correction to piece it together through media reports into the inquest reports

and they even took a day shortly after i arrived in hong kong to retrace her last us. and i started afterschool, where on the last day of her life, she walked past a trophy case at st. paul's secondary school and underneath the mirror of the virgin mary in happy valley district of hong kong, there was a gloomy day when i did this law can i just got the hong kong so the time change had my mind on my step. i got the feeling i really was following a ghost on the street. she'd been wearing her school uniform, should been carrying a backpack and she was heading home from happy valley to her family's apartment, oddly enough and healthy gardens high-rise complex. i thought her path through the forest of skyscrapers towards the central business district of hong kong. charlotte had grown up in the city and because she did she certainly found the cultural

milan to be quite normal. she passed the seventh-day adventist minor church, a buddhist temple, one mcdonald's a few bucks later another. it is of that walk wasn't at its heart who cannot come shoot on sight to walk past a series of cemeteries. she walked past the hong kong cemetery, st. michael's cemetery, muslim cemetery in the july pass the doors of the hospital where her own body would be delivered. and when she reached the tram stop on this busy one she wrote, a shopkeeper from across the street spotted charlie and she would later tell the inquest board that they caught your attention because she was so preternaturally thin. he briefly lost sight when the china security review and she had collapsed on a sidewalk. had she made on that day and died in her family's apartment in healthy gardens, her passing

might not have caught the attention of the media. however because she collapsed on the bitty hong kong shopping district, the story was really irresistible to the media. and on short notice the hong kong reporters were tasked with the obvious questions, what has this woman died from? what did it mean? who was affect it? and in trying -- in writing the stories both for newspapers and magazines and television book reports that came out about charlie's death, they look to the western experts. and this is not an unreasonable thing to do. did more anorexia in america appeared with the leaders of the world and mental illness health disorders to get about categorizing them. it was natural to turn to western manuals and western experts. and we were only the western experts only too happy to help your up the next was basically importation of the american conception of anorexia and dozens of newspapers and magazines and television reports told the story of how america

thinks of anorexia, whatever ancillary symptoms come with it, whose respect, what are the coach roles behind it. it was only after that moment in hong kong, with the death in 1984 that you saw a rise of anorexia in hong kong. not only arises anorexia but a rise of the american version of anorexia. so finally went to were reporting fat phobia and dysmorphia. this is a nervous time in hong kong. this was before the handover to chinese rule and after two known scorer. as a time when many families were being broken to it immigration. there was a lot of nervousness in the air and the blood was seemingly like to call general loading of psychopathology. there's no one way for the human creature to express the general loading of psychopathology. at the moment when the unconscious mind likes to the cultural around it. and it does this without our conscious knowledge. it looks to the culture of

death, what are the expressions for this insecurity or discomfort in feeling in my mind? and edward shorter was a medical historian in canada explain this idea of the symptom pool to me. it's when someone unconsciously latches onto a behavior. they're doing so for very specific reason. the persons taken a troubling emotional and internal conflicts that are often indistinct and frustrating beyond expression and distilling them into a symptom behavior of this culturally recognized signal of self patients unconsciously endeavor to produce the symptoms that will correspond to the medical diagnosis of the time. the sort of cultural molding of the unconscious happens imperceptibly and follows a large number of cultural clues that the patient is simply not aware of. so the rest of anorexia in hong kong i believe shows us that

symptom pool of candor from one culture to another. many ideas and behaviors can float a cultural currents of course fashion trends, typefaces, exercises that certainly contribute to this in hong kong. but on this cultural can flow police about mental illness and they themselves can impact the unconscious mind of the population. so, the third example want to tell you about tonight regards posttraumatic stress disorder. and it's one of the medical anthropologist i talked to believes that ptsd will be the greatest success story of globalization. this part of the book has gotten increase in attention because of what's happening in haiti and were now just in the process of potentially ramping up another psychological invention they are

from the chapter i told the story of the tsunami and how american counselors questioned, not only, counselors and a scientologist, a field therapist rapid eye movement therapist, every achievement in america that wanted and thought they could help out with on the ground in sri lanka. in most carried within a western check was for ptsd and often employ the type of critical incident debriefing, this idea that the quicker you process the event to quickly talk about the event more likely it is that she'll heal and the better you'll likely be. and i interviewed some of these people and they were all exceedingly well-meaning. they often travel to these places on their own time, really wanting to help. in the bottom line i think i believe that the very worst that other administrations in this foreign country, would show solidarity to people, that if nothing else, they were there to witness as they said and i must

be a good thing. i do make a case in the book that are bad outcomes for this sort of intervention. there are things that we should really be aware of. to begin with, the ptsd symptom checklist does not account for the various psychological reactions to trauma around the world. it's a particular set of ideas of the caring in america that we believe in very much. as one anthropologist told me, he said, ptsd is true in our time, but it's not true in all places in time. the type is sometimes and reactions are different around the world when you go on just at the ptsd checklist and the idea that you'll see what's on that list you often find what you expect and often miss a variety of other symptoms that are specific to the culture. another thing you're likely to miss a few russian on short notice is that cultures match the symptoms that they have with ways to heal. so while cultures have ideas about psychological reactions to trauma in all cultures of various modes and with appealing and ours is not the only one or

the best one. oftentimes when you go in and we defined teacher population that their reactions should be different, but it's really this modern reaction and we know more about psychological trauma than you do. you often disconnecting them from the cultural resources that they have a hand, which are bound up with the cultural symptoms that they'll express. there was another more subtle and pervasive difference. by and large, and let me just take this example of sri lanka in particular, the anthropologists to study true like a know the big dog for the most poor report topological trauma in line with the center of the state in the ptsd diagnostic list, anxiety, fear, numbing, hypervigilance and so forth. they tend to see negative consequences in terms of the damage done to their social worlds, their social relationships. they will describe the damage as

i cannot fulfill my social role in my group in my social group has been broken. they have have been much merciless eurocentric version of the self. in short they conceive of the damage done by mr. niemi is occurring not inside their mind the way we think it is but in their social environment. this is subtle but really important distinction. in western thinking, the causes, you know, we also think ptsd causes social damage but we think the psychological damage results in the social problems. a westerner might ascend to depression or anxiety brought on by ptsd would cause people to fail in their bowl of the parent or their social role. for sri lankan, this did not appear to be a cause-and-effect phenomenon. the failure to manage one's social responsibilities to fill a place in the group was identified as the primary symptom of distress and not a consequence of the internal psychological problem. so sri lankan made the point

where those two things could not be teased upon. this evidence is on the social of the psychological becomes critical when you begin to consider how one makes you from a tragic event. for an american, you would think it would be, to think of taking time away from one social role. the damages in my mind i need to take her with my social will to heal from a damage so i can then fill my role in the group. for sri lankan to take time away from their social will to heal from psychological trauma would be an expression of the symptom that they're pointing out that they cannot fulfill their social role. so there's a disconnect. it's not the sri lankan think of it correctly and we think of it incorrectly, but there is a match between how they think about it and how their culture addresses. you know, western counselors often explained this idea with a

metaphor of being on an airplane and with the oxygen mask comes down. if you're sitting with a child or someone who can't take care of themselves, you know the drill, you put on your mask first and then take care of them. but this western assumption that most of distress experienced the survivor comes from damage to the individual psyche that makes it difficult to help others. but for sri lankan sense of well-being emanates from their connection to the social network around them. for sri lankan the very expressed in experiencing mental health might be embodied in the act of fulfilling one role of helping others. so to the purpose of modern metaphor in the oxygen mask over them out the child sitting next to you would be the very thing that would allow the sri lankan to breathe. and apologists are sometimes led early, you know, there's some ideas that are brought which are my counselors other countries

for some answers how there's firing dumbfounding. the underlying premise -- that the psychological consequences of trauma are similar to the newly discovered disease, that we now know in the west that causes xyz symptoms in the local politicians are unaware of what happens to human mind after terrible event. that implicit ascension leaves anthropologist who shaken her head in disbelief. i do think it takes a willful blindness to lead the other cultural slack of meaningful framework for understanding human responses to trauma. arthur kleiman, a very well known anthropologist at harvard university have the most cutting quote in this topic and he said, most disasters happen -- most disasters in the world have been outside the west that we come in a pathologist or reactions. we say you don't know how to do but the situation. we take the cultural narratives away and we oppose arms. it's a terrible example of dehumanizing people.

and once one comprehends, you know, the differences in psychological reactions to trauma in the different modes of feeling, indeed sometimes the western, colleges to rest in a disaster zone with a week or two weeks notice and somewhat absurd into drive this point home, when we stressed me to consider the scenario of reverse. imagine a reactions that if they flew after 9/11 and told survivors they needed to engage in a certain set of rituals in order to sever their relationships from the dead. how what does it with us? would that make sense? somehow we believe that our psychological notions about psychological trauma are scientific and therefore they have little to do with their shifting culture of ideas. but their previous look at history of these ideas or a glance across coulter proves this to be incorrect. our notions of psychological trauma are in fact bogged down with the human mind that are particular to our place and

time. so i have one last chapter to tell you about and were going to mix it up on this one. it's about schizophrenia in africa. and i put the schizophrenia chapter third in the group because i knew that for most people i could convince them that something like depression or something like ptsd, where the borders are not totally clear, that i convinced them that culture plays a big role in creating these categories. but they also know that schizophrenia most people think of as a biological disease. it would be the same all over the world. remarkably, even hear coulter proves to be extremely important. in a 30 year set a come of the world health organization, schizophrenics of them in developing countries did much better, not just a little, but much better in terms of relapse, functioning, remission rates

than those living in the west. and i could see from these large dataset that something was going on in local cultures, the local culture was having an effect. indeed, there was a great deal of speculation as to what that might be. and remarkably even if the calling or not there were remarkably few -- what was really needs at this time was anthropologist, not just an anthropologist, they needed a field of anthropology which names that to see what was happening requires someone to sing around the family, look at how they talked about the onus, how they treated the person, how the community thought about the onus. and for a while, the cross-cultural psychiatrists are waiting for the anthropologist comment. indeed i found one anthropologist who had written a book called dissertation on this topic have gone to zanzibar and sat with families and i'm very pleased to say that she is here with us tonight and she's going to come up and has given her ten

minutes or less to carry the schizophrenia section. but i thought since she was here i wanted to her talk about it. she was a tremendous house when i visited her in to the bar and also tremendously forthcoming in the book. if you've read the chapter and schizophrenia in africa that resolves largely around not only her research by very personal things that happened in her life that really gives a chapter shape. it was the hardest chapter for me to write for a number of reasons. the most complicated, but it is my favorite. so i want to invite judea in austin next racial talk to for a few minutes about -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> that was the one thing she said to me, the one instruction she said was don't use the word petite. [laughter]

>> accept short stature, not petite. thank you. even invited me to tell you a little bit about how the how i became interested studying schizophrenia on the other side of the planet and so i'm going to do that. i began my professional life as an occupational therapist actually. and my first job was in a large state mental hospital in new york and poughkeepsie actually. and there i got to see our baseline treatment of schizophrenia and the u.s. to become fairly dissatisfied with it even has a young person in my twenties. after that i took a good job teaching occupational therapy and then i was required to teach psychiatric doctrine to whether young minds and they just presented question after question after question. so my very first sabbatical is a professor at aunt and zanzibar 10th in al where he founded and started an occupational therapy in the mental hospital

bear. and immediately was struck at the difference in notion for ordinary people about what the problem was. the first conversations i had at the mental hospital were with patients and families about the fact that the problem with spirit possession. and yes, it didn't seem to be a rub it all. it didn't seem to be contradictory for them to say we bring them here to the mental hospital and they get little white tablets and it makes them more manageable at home. the psychiatrist with whom i worked than was a man from tanzania, from zanzibar whose father was at that time the president to zanzibar and dr. y. k-kilo, my colleague had studied in germany, east germany and nigeria and in the u.k. before coming back to zanzibar and have many interesting conversations with him about mental illness and about culture.

and it was really wonderful for me to see what someone from outside my culture thought about my culture and for me to have someone so educated to ask my questions. and so, when i returned to the united states, i continue teaching but i went back to school and got another degree, a degree in anthropology. and i began reading those same world health organization studies that even has told you about, which are studies have been undertaken three times in the 70's, 80's and 90's, different names. the international pilot study of schizophrenia the first one. the second one call does that which i thought was a very interesting choice of acronym.

standing for determinants. what i learned from those health organization studies was that just as he then said knew why, but persistently not expecting to discover this the world health organization discovered time and time again people do better. people recover more frequently and those who don't recover completely function better in poor countries as compared to rich countries. and they've splice and dice the data in a number of ways to see if they can find an artifact that would make it go away and it's finding a persistent process. in a row whole host of hypotheses about why that might be so, some that you said zero it's easier in third world countries. it's not such a complicated material culture and socially the rules are more clear-cut. i found that to be wrong. large extended families and zanzibar are utterly more complex and require a lot of

negotiation. and there were other theories about the of work, the work is what makes you well. and if it's any wearing culture there's always work work to be done. i found a wee bit of truth there. but one of my professors who is retiring at the time but i was getting to go off and do my research that you don't really have to go truly because they can say what it is. the families are more benign. i should've let him write my dissertation because i think that was the thing that i found most. there wasn't the persistent notion that people are perfect of all unfixable and if they are not normal and not perfect, they should be worked on at great length until they are. but we should hold out all hope for their recovery to be just like everyone else. it was this tremendous tolerance of peoples changed behavior. and in part, that's informed by narratives about spirit possession because all humans

and zanzibar are permeable to invasion by spirit. the zanzibar is the muslim culture about 95% of the people are muslims. and if you know your koran that you know that besides angels and demons are also the jan. and there are many different kinds of spirits active in the world good ones come about when someone just like humans, changeable capricious ones that you never know what they're going to do. and those spirits when they change someone's behavior are not cast out like in the christian tradition. they are fetid, they're given a party, there is what do they want? but will it take for you to settle down and then there given that thing. and this seemed to give families together. and it seemed -- families were not critical of the identified patient's symptoms nearly as much. i worked with five individuals in three diverse families. i visited them every week and

couldn't put them and hung out for dinner and we went on picnics. i went to weddings, i went to a funeral, the things that anthropologist do like ethan said, said in a room of people and watch what they do. and i was really rather surprised when even found me. other than my research committee and my phd, my doctoral studies i think he is the only other human that spread my dissertation. last night i have to give them big props for that. it really makes me happy. ethan was also a great guess when it came to visit me and zanzibar because i'm not retired from academia and i ran a guest house and zanzibar and i do have business cards with me. when ethan is with those who suffered a weeklong power outage and how to eat his dinner by flashlight and he helped us plan for tomatoes and stake them out. he was a great cast and we had a lot of good times together. so i felt very comfortable sharing with him as he shares with the readership in chapter

three that mental illness has touch my own personal life very closely and everything i thought i knew about anything when i came home from zanzibar was quickly put topsy-turvy by the person i was very close to having an episode of the severe manic behavior and a bipolar diagnoses. so just as he said, it's not that the sri lankans have a right and we have it wrong. it's that it is culture bound. so even the lessons i learned in africa couldn't always put into practice when i got back to the united states to deal with my own mad relatives. so thank you for letting me share the mic with you, ethan. i think i'm finished. [applause] >> i would be very pleased as we do a little q&a here in a minute if you have questions for someone to bring her back.

so in the end, this book is about mental illness and about how we influence other cultures, but it's also why hope all the chapters come back around to america in the end and her cultural stories we tell them what they need. i think it's only by looking at ourselves from the perspective of other cultures that we can hope to see, you know, what is timelessly human and what is shaped by culture. with the knowledge i think there's a chance with personally in subculture if for some agency we can decide as individuals and as groups whether we want to accept the new narrative about mental illness and is going to be a new one coming down the road, there always is, and we can decide who we want to trust. when it comes from manufacturing the symptom pools for our time. you know, cross-cultural psychiatry is like juli and i anthropologist like someone commends us that we're living in

a remarkable moment in human history. at the same time, they've been working hard to document the difference is, different cultural understanding of mental health and illness. those differences are literally disappearing before their eyes. i've come to think of them as a psychologist versions of the badness of the rainforest desperate to document while only saying a few steps ahead of the bulldozer. i think we should worry about this loss of diversity in the worldseven conceptions and treatment about mental illness and lack of the same way we worry about the loss of biological diversity in nature. modes of healing and culture specific release about how to achieve mental health can be glossed in humanity without agreement of all them lapsing into extinction. the diversity of human understanding of the mind can disappear before we are truly comprehended this value. biologists suggest that within the dense and vital biodiversity of the rainforest are chemical

compounds that may someday cure modern plagues. and similarly, when the diversity of the different cultural understanding of mental health and illness may exist knowledge that we cannot afford to lose and i believe we are racist diversity at our own peril. so i really appreciate your attention tonight. i would love to take some questions for a minute. and if you would go over -- i'm forced to make you walk a long distance over to that microphone. please do. and if you have a question for juli, will bring her right back up. [applause] we have one question. fantastic. >> i'm going to situate my question a little bit. i grew up in samoa, part of the

time in samoa as the daughter of an anthropologist and i just returned there recently for a month as posted niemi work bear that was direct to buy the samoa and community and run by the samoan community and was guided in large part by a paper written by my friend on the situation of the concepts of the self and samoan cultures opposed to western notions of being guided by that and consulting with samoan pastoral councils on how we might be serve that population started coming in with our kind of western-based pathology is a notion. incidentally the critical incident a briefing model is not holding up that well in the response research at any rate. >> even in the west. >> even in the west. at any rate they have this fantastic fascinating experience which i just returned from. and i've been very involved in

the field that narrative therapy adjust therapy, social justice-based therapy, which contextualizes coming up, mental suffering a psychological suffered within social political cultural context. and so there's been a lot of fascinating worked on that area. i would regard that as a kind of counter turned to the mainstream pathology is the notions that are coming out of a more medical model or the psychiatric model that we're imposing in the medicalization of the mental illness. so i'm wondering what you're aware of in that field here this is present in sort of an analysis and in terms of counter turned or not just a counter analysis, but counter developments. i'm very excited about what i've been in contact with and feel very privileged to be connected with that. but i wonder what else you're encountered in that way. >> that sounds great. i did pick for stories with us and the bad was happening. i've heard even since the article i published in "the new

york times" magazine a couple weeks ago. i heard lots of stories of psychiatrist and you're absolutely right, but we are do know that and we're on and how these things in mind. atomic community, for instance, talks a lot about now about social cycle interventions and this is the assumption that the meaning and healing exists in the culture and exist within the institutions of our culture that can be helped by us. so not to go in there and impose meaning on them, but you know that the meme exists in the church in the church needs to be rebuilt. or that the educational system -- you're describing something even more sophisticated. it is my hope for the way things would go, which is we can't redraw the lines between cultures in the forces of globalization. but ask every one of the researchers who is what i said, what is the future hold, can we reverse these trends? each one of them shook their heads and said these terms are too big. so globalization is of ideas and

asserted homogenization of ideas is probably inevitable. but at least they can go as we transfer knowledge to the rest of the world, at least the knowledge can go both ways. so it not a matter of us imposing our ideas or assuming we have the most modern understanding, but that in a suit like the situation you described was one where in this very natural way, knowledge is going both ways between the culture about mental health and healing. we have a great deal to share with the world at our scientific understanding of the mind our drugs are not great now. they're going to get better. they have valid canal in certain situations. certainly going to get better. are understood to have the mind is going to be more sophisticated. i'm not suggesting we had the knowledge for the rest of the world but to understand as we share with the rest of the world of the rest of the world is coming to share with us and that even though ideas that the scientific notions of the mind

play out in cultural ways. it play out in the way people around and no person who look appeal person and play out in their minds if the ill person themselves are not simply scientific and therefore without culture. figure culture with them. so i take great solace in the story told in a sound like a wonderful thing. >> ethan, i was wondering about the case in japan and depression, there's a big your company putting a lot of advertising dollars into spreading this idea. in the case of china, the media is putting these ideas about anorexia. but in your letter to cases, and wondering whether the ideas are studied as readily because it seems like it's more based on one-on-one interactions. i'm just wondering whether you're finding those -- whether you're frightening schizophrenia , defining the spreading in the same way.

>> the idea of spreading behind schizophrenia is the biological notion of mental illness as opposed to spirit possession notion. and we are promoting that. we think about the cure to stigma. we think if we just get people to think of it it just like a medical disease. unfortunately when you study those outcomes, when people believe that the biomedical notion, just like mental illness, there will likely to want social distance from the old person. their mark likely to think of them as dangerous and unpredictable and not want anything to do with them. so what we think that actually causes it. and so, you make a good point that each of the chapters, the reasons i picked those four chapters has to do with the back yours. the trauma counselors rushing into the culture and the media and anorexia and then a more general pressure this biomedical notion of the mind around the rest of the world, so it's

different than looking at those different vectors. if i was going to chart them in terms of which ones really have legs, ptsd is a massively -- has massive legs. you know, going all of the world. our way of thinking about trauma, very compelling to other people. depression, absolutely. and the schizophrenia and anorexia are more subtle, small, less examples in that way. so, this seems like the last question. >> i'm trying to decide i'm a ethan to come if you answered my question in response the first one, but i don't think so. when you were readiness, did you try to anticipate or did you anticipate at all and try to address any reactions as you might get from the people who have a lot invested in the way we diagnose and treat mental illness. have you gotten any pushback so far? do anticipate that wack >> i have to say hopefully will

slide under the radar because the people that have taken them on, i have a space of the name of the guy, you know, these are people with academic positions and professional reputation. and the way the drug companies have gone after people who have suggested, david healy, absolutely, i think david healy is really in a remarkable fight for his very reputation. he really is -- i have the recommended syringes did in the story of pack fell and the science that surrounds those drugs and how the science has been fundamentally created by the companies themselves look to david healy's work. it's remarkable. but he is really in a tremendous way. so i haven't had any pushback.

all the responses i've gotten from people in atomic community from psychologists has been remarkably positive. so very much hopeful this is an idea that i feel like this is an idea that has risen up to the consciousness of an america and our culture and make sense to people when they hear it and they think yeah, we really should be thinking about this and looking for these reactions. so about to sign books. i do upon confession to make that i have my own mental illness and it doesn't have a name yet. but the symptom is for getting people's names as they want to write in the book. there are people i know very well. i will one forget your name in the 20 forget how to spell it. so save me the embarrassment and dusty walk-up even if you know me, tell me your name. i would love for you to take a look at this button above to be

involved in a conversation with the overtime about it. and i really appreciate you coming out tonight to hear me speak and to hear someone speak. thank you rematch. [laughter] >> well, on your screen is carol back to his administrator with the seed school in maryland and with there are four students from the seed school. carol back, explain what the seed school is and why you were at the national press club's author night. >> well, the seed school of maryland is a college prep public boarding school. it's in baltimore city but it's our students from out where land. the school is only two years old

and the unique thing about the school is that it is a boarding school. so our students are living with us in college leg or majorities during the week and go home on the weekends. in the idea is to have a 24 hour thing to use it as well as we can do that all of our students will be prepared for college. that is our goal. so the students here tonight are seventh graders and they are already and have been talking about college for over a year. when they came to assist excreta as last year. >> explained the philosophy behind feed. >> the idea of seed is there are students who could truly benefit and have life-changing experience as if they are given 24 hours a day to focus on their studies in all kinds of development that will help them be successful, not only in college but beyond. and that's really are a most singular goal is to make sure all of our students are prepared. >> how are you funded? >> we are largely funded

publicly. the partnerships of the state of maryland has made a unique commitment to the long-term operating funds for the school. but the private sector of individual donors have made it possible for the campus to be built and they are helping us, you know, with start up cost as we get to scale. >> and why are you at the national press club's author night? >> were thrilled to be at the national press club's author night. at the invitation of the club, which has taken an interest in both the seed school of maryland and her sister school, the seed school of d.c. so the idea here is that her school as premier when we have hardly any books in our library. the patrons here at the book fair are making their own purchases for themselves and also by dictionaries and novels for our library. in the students are here to think them and to also share with some of the patrons of very small booklet of their own writing, poems and essays that they are prepared. >> well, let's meet the students. tell us your name and grade in which her favorite subject is.

>> my name is stephanie tiant got and i'm in seventh grade and i really don't have the favorite subject because i'm good at all. but i really like math and i'm doing algebra one right now in ms. murphy is a really cool teacher. >> why did you decide to go or why are you going to the seed school? >> well, when i first got the author for the seed school it was like whew i am away from my parents and i get to be responsible for my own actions. in the seed school really makes it open that you can be whoever you want to be coming you can express yourself in at the same time you know your goal is to go to college. so that's why i got the seed school. >> what are you reading right now? >> right now we just finished a book and are starting to read the diary of anne frank. it's about a german girl who is aggregated and had to go to these recreation camps and stuff

and we just really want to share her opinion of what she was going through. >> stephanie, thank you so much. we have more students here. this looks like devin. devin, i'm holding here in my hand a booklet girdwood is that? >> in this book will be a poems written by the students of the seed school and also our work from the our classes we have in our school. >> and argue publish them here? >> yes, one of the artworks is the bishop i created. in the book i have texture. >> go ahead and show it to us. >> in the book we have different things in here. we also oppose re-created. here are some of the artworks. this is lucas' chess piece. here is my chess piece right here. if the wings and other textures on my chess piece, which was the bishop. they also did the rope, the queen and the king.

>> so you're a chess player? >> yes, i am also in the chess club at school. we're different clubs at the school such as football, basketball, soccer and other things. >> no devin, you are here at the press club's author night. what kind of books you want for your library? >> we have a dictionary which i would really like that would help us with the school day because it also gives you tips about the work about some of the words that should be used in school. also, we have a thesaurus here, which looks very interesting from the cover i've looked at. this is the dictionary for high school. i can show you some of the words. >> let's hold it up so everyone can see that home. is this a dictionary you will use in school? >> we do not have businesses why people are buying books for library. we have seen many people buy these who we are hoping to see them in our library school. >> all right, thank you so much.

we have two more students. hi, my. how are you? what are you reading right now? >> well, i'm reading a book called the mystery of the blue count ghost. i've been reading the book was very good stories in it called chicken soup for the teenage soul and it's about how teenagers deal with problems at school and with their life and stuff and how to overcome those problems. and it's really nice because we are all amid a school, becoming teenagers and stuff. so like that's what i picked that book to read. >> what to enjoy most about the seed school? how did you get in that? >> well, my friend told me about the seed school and so like i really wanted to apply because i've always wanted to go to a boarding school and i like thought it would be a really fun experience. and like, my favorite part about

the seed school is like learning on a higher level in learning new things that i didn't know before like algebra one. i never thought that i would learn so many things that i'm learning now. i thought all those things would be like so hard that i would wait until ten great to learn. but i'm already in seventh grade already learning those things and it's very exciting. >> so your library and school. if people are watching this and want to donate something to the seed school, what would be the best kind of books or resources to donate? >> i think the best kind of books would be like something that would catch our eye, like something very interesting, like it doesn't have to be always a fun book. it could be like real world writing, like looks like biographies and stuff and dictionaries, too. because like you can always learn new words and stuff, like it's very cool to learn new words that you never knew before. >> such as this dictionary here.

so people can buy this dictionary and donated to the school. is that what you're saying? >> yes. >> one more student we want to talk to mrs. madison. hi, madison. what are you reading right now? >> i am reading the diary of anne frank and i'm thinking that is very good and it's our life was and how difficult it was to be in that situation. >> she was about in seventh grade to what she? this kind of weird to think about her life and your life. >> yes, it is. >> are you a poet? >> yes, actually of a couple poems in the book right there. >> what do you like about poetry? >> i like poetry does i can express my feelings and tell what my life is going through and how the seed school in maryland is. and it also helps me learn something different, like i can put different words into my

poetry. >> well, madison, are you in seventh grade also? >> yes, sir. >> thank you for spending a few minutes with us. and carol beck, one more question, if people are interested in donating to the seed school, books or whatever, with the best way to contact you? >> well, will provide our address and phone number -- >> do you have a website? >> yes, it is the seed school and indeed got bored. >> carol beck of the seed school of american. ..