It's Madness

Book excerpt: "It's Madness examines Korea's critical years under Japanese colonialism when mental health first became defined as a medical and social problem. As in most Asian countries, severe social ostracism, shame, and fear of jeopardizing marriage prospects drove most Korean families to conceal the mentally ill behind closed doors. This book explores the impact of Chinese traditional medicine and its holistic approach to treating mental disorders, the resilience of folk illnesses as explanations for inappropriate and dangerous behaviors, the emergence of clinical psychiatry as a discipline, and the competing models of care under the Japanese colonial authorities and Western missionary doctors. It also analyzes interpretations of culture-bound emotional states that Koreans have viewed as specific to their interpersonal relationships, social experiences, local contexts, and the new medical discourses that the Korean press adopted to reshape social understandings of mental illness. Drawing upon unpublished archival as well as printed sources, this is the first study to examine the ways in which "madness" has been understood, classified, and treated in traditional Korea and the role of science in pathologizing and redefining mental illness under Japanese colonial rule"--Provided by publisher.