2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
The Medicalization and Gendering of "Depression" in Japan: From a Medical Anthropological Perspective
| Project/Area Number |
19720234
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Cultural anthropology/Folklore
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| Research Institution | Keio University |
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Principal Investigator |
KITANAKA Junko Keio University, 文学部, 准教授 (20383945)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2007 – 2009
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| Keywords | うつ病 / 医療人類学 / 精神医学 / ジェンダー / 医学史 / 労働災害 |
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| Research Abstract |
This research has examined how "depression" has emerged as a significant medical problem in Japan since the 1990s despite its alleged historical absence there, and how the ongoing medicalization of depression in Japan is transforming people's experiences. Given the globalizing medicalization of depression, there is a growing concern that this process may lead to individual biological reductionism, whereby social problems that have given rise to depression in the first place become concealed and are instead dealt with as problems of individuals. In Japan, however, partly because depression has often been depicted as psychopathology of work that particularly afflicts hardworking men, it is increasingly discussed as a social problem. Drawing upon a medical anthropological perspective and data from ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this research thus illuminates how the medicalization of depression has come to take a distinctive course in Japan.
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