imomus

Something a bit more empirically sound than people voluntarily fronting up for mental health treatment would be suicide rates. And there, you don't see any particular spike for Anglo-Saxon countries. Richer countries tend to have higher rates, but among them, the more 'socialised' European countries have more suicides than the UK, US, Canada, Australia, etc. France has double the UK's rate, Germany's is substantially higher, so is Denmark's, in fact so is just about every other Western European country (and as for the Japanese, they are, of course, famously suicidal). James's thesis may well be right, in fact it's an age-old theme that conspicuous consumption is an empty enterprise. But statistics can be used to show anything with this kind of sociology.