Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization

by Harry Yi-Jui Wu

Overview

The World Health Organization's post-World War II work on the epidemiology and classification of mental disorders and its vision of a "world psyche."

In 1946, the World Health Organization undertook a project in social psychiatry that aimed to discover the epidemiology and classification of mental disorders. In Mad by the Millions, Harry Y-Jui Wu examines the WHO's ambitious project, arguing that it was shaped by the postwar faith in technology and expertise and the universalizing vision of a "world psyche." Wu shows that the WHO's idealized scientific internationalism laid the foundations of today's highly highly metricalized global mental health system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262362344
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Series:	Culture and Psychiatry
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Harry Yi-Jui Wu is Associate Professor in the Cross College Elite Program and Department of Medical Humanities and Social Medicine at National Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: A Shared Vision 1
Once an Internationally Shared Vision 10
Problematizing the History of Global Health 13
An Overview of This Book 19
2 Structure 27
Lessons of War 30
Mental Health as Public Health 34
The WHO Model and Early Efforts in Mental Health 38
The 1948 International Congress on Mental Health 40
From “Collection of Hunches” to Practice of Collaboration 43
New Issues in Mental Health after World War II 45
The Manageable Project and Four-Man Meetings 50
From Impediment to Collaboration: Ethnographic Approaches 55
Birth of an International Team 59
3 Method 63
The Need for a Common Language 65
US National Institute of Mental Health 71
The WHO’s Scouts and Their International Trips 72
1961: WFMH and World Mental Health Year 75
Seeking Peripheral Input 76
Realization of the “Common Language” Project 81
Significance of the WHO’s International Social Psychiatry Project 87
4 Experts 91
Africa and Latin America 95
Taiwan: The Ideal Bedfellow 101
Incomplete Decolonization 103
Chinese as Scientific Other 107
Taiwan as an International Laboratory to Understand the “Chinese” 109
Dreamscape of Experts 110
Imagined Equal Footing 111
5 Technology 115
Building Internationalism 116
Classification as Standardization 117
Information Technology 119
Standardizing Diagnostic Tools 121
Translation, Language, and Misunderstandings: Problems with the PSE 124
A Managerial Leader 126
The Promises of Technology 128
Videotaping 128
Data Management Technology 132
Computing Software 135
Bewilderment about Technology 136
Fallacies of Neutrality 137
6 Discontent 141
Internally Contested Methods 142
Beyond Category Fallacies 146
Psychiatry in the Two Chinas 149
Original Equipment Manufacturing for World Standards 152
A Culture-Bound ICD 155
Mobile Experts across the Globe 158
Still One World, Many Cultures? 160
Epilogue: Return to the Matrix 163
Origins of the Gaps 165
The Undetermined Future of Mental Health Standards 167
Hearing Echoes from the Past 172
Archives 175
Notes 177
Index 219

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Harry Yi-Jui Wu has produced the first genuinely transnational history of psychiatry.”
—Matthew Smith, Professor of Health History, Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde
 
“In this tour de force, Harry Yi-Jui Wu examines how a group of ambitious professionals, motivated by utopian commitments to equality and world citizenship, and brought together by the newly established World Health Organization, developed the first uniform classification system of mental disorders.”
—Hans Pols, Professor, School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney; author of Nurturing Indonesia
 
“This thought-provoking book convincingly demonstrates that global attempts at creating a universal psychiatric language were tightly related to broader social efforts to redefine world citizenship after the Second World War. It provides a much-needed historical background for understanding present-day discussions about global mental health.”
—Ana Antic, Professor, University of Copenhagen; author of Therapeutic Fascism