Your Soul Has A Cold: Depression In Japan
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // July 12th, 2007 // 10:28 am
In Japan, the suicide rate is about 30,000 a year, higher than other industrialized nations. And over the past decade, drugmakers have succesfully marketed antidepressants there. In fact, Glaxo once used this slogan, ‘Does Your Soul Have A Cold?’ to market its pill, an effort that apparently helped lessen some of the social stigma caused by mental illness.
Now, a filmmaker has used that title for a new documentary about the uneasy evolution of depression and treatment in Japan, and he seems to harbor some ambivalence. In a brief interview after the film was screened recently at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Mills told The Japan Times that, “GlaxoSmithKline has done a lot to educate about depression (in Japan). It’s just weird when someone feels so bad and then a drug company like GlaxoSmithKline tries to make a profit off of them.”
The film is about “exporting American definitions of depression and the use of antidepressants to the ancient culture of Japan,” according to the film’s production company, IFC TV. However, instead of explaining how the Western approach to clinical depression has led to increased consumption of antidepressants, the Times writes that his film relies on actions and words of its subjects, along with info about the drug industry, to tell a story about depression and antidepressants in contemporary Japan.
The film, Mills told the paper, neither condones nor disapproves of the use of antidepressants in treating depression. However, the filmmaker does admit to one specific intention: “I hope the movie helps people suffering from depression in Japan realize that they are not alone and that they are not invisible.”
Michael Fetters, a doc who heads the Japanese Family Health System with the University of Michigan, told the paper that anything that helps to facilitate the treatment of depression is positive, but he warned about underplaying the severity of depression for the sake of an ad campaign. “If we are equating depression to a cold, then marketing has gotten out of control.”
sid
Let me make sure I read this right, I am sure someone out there can tell me I am wrong.
In Japan, there is a stigma about taking AD’s, so I assume the number of AD scrips is much lower. BUT, there suicide rate is higher? That can’t be right can it? People don’t hurt themselves unless medicated.
So you are telling me, there is a chance with proper patient education and treatment, sometimes with medication. We might be able to do better in Japan?
I know I missed something, someone antipharma help me out.
Mark
ok sid I’ll help you out. People are depressed around the world. Drugs might work, so might exercise, so might a sugar pill.Sugar link
Speaking/writing of drugs, you got to take the “correct” drugs not the illegal kind like marijuana or opium, cause those ones are bad right?
Oh and the legal ones they can’t possible make people crazy can they?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FxJomeak4V4 FDA Hearing (1991) with Testimony
tracey
I have a friend in Japan kyoto who is suffering from severe deppression I am not sure what to advise him or how to help him he says he wants to committ suicide please give me some informatrion so I can pass it on
truthman
GSK exported “depression as a disease” to the Japanese
And with it that, it also imported Paxil..
And just as Paxil causes incresed suicide rates everywhere else in the world it also incresed suicide rates in Japan..
Japan sees an increase in suicide among Paxil users
June 28, 2007
A Japanese health official says that cases involving suicide or suicidal behavior among patients taking Paxil were 13 times higher last year than in the previous year. The Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare says that approximately 920,000 people in Japan suffered from depression during 2005.
According to reports by doctors to Japan’s Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency, 15 patients taking Paxil committed suicide last year, compared with only one in 2005. An additional 24 patients attempted or contemplated suicide in 2006 while taking Paxil, compared with only two patients during the previous year.
http://www.hkllp.com/paxil-news/japan-sees-an-increase-in-suicide-among-paxil-users-2.html
Bob Freeman
I have some experience in working in Japan and offer a few generalizations:
1) The Japanese regulators and physicians are extremely concerned about drug safety. You see this in much lower approved doses and quick withdrawals if safety seems to be an issue. The general believe is that they will trade off efficacy for better safety.
2) The regulatory body is loath to accept data from occidentals. Separate studies are required on ethnic Japanese.
3) The culture requires stoicism and one of the few accepted ways to let off steam and not be criticized is to drink to excess.
4). Japanese marketing does not permit negative comparisons to other similar drugs so you often see bizarre prescribing–how this adds to suicidal behavior with PPIs would be difficult to measure.
5). I do not know how suicide is regarded nowadays. It used to be a stigma-free option in the face of personal or professional failure/scandal.
6). Certain diseases have great stigma; cancer for one. The Japanese are cancer-phobic (big generalization.) I don’t know how depression is viewed.
Although this appears on surface to be a culturally-biased statement, I don’t know if occidentals are capable of fully understanding Japanese culture.