KB Squared

Lately, I've made an effort to read more about the challenges of the health care industry. Found an interesting article in the Washington Post on the paradigm of Western biomedicine. Treatment, in this case, centered around psychiatric drugs and how their clinical trials lack cultural diversity. Now, I do tend to agree with the premise that a drug that addresses the biology behind an imbalance in serotonin levels would treat patients across cultural lines in relatively the same manner. However, in the article, multiple psychiatrists focused on the "superiority" of psychiatric illnesses, even going so far as to compare it to AIDS therapy. Which makes me wonder. What seems to be at stake is how people perceive the disesase and more importantly, how cultures believe that the disease should be addressed. Advocates can decry the levels of cultural insensitivity. However, economics and a natural arrogance in one's own form of treatment (in this case, Western psychiatric drugs) remove the universal nature of health care.