First world problems

I don’t really remember what spurred the question exactly, but while I was home, one of really good friends asked me this question:

“Do you think that we (Americans) create our own problems?”

I’ve been thinking about that conversation we had since. And like most conversations I have that aren’t between myself and my keyboard (ie don’t involve a “delete” button), I’ve been thinking about how much more eloquent I could have been in that conversation.

We (people who live a world with reliable internet and climate control and 5G smartphones and coffee that costs almost as much as I make in a day) don’t create our own problems. As someone who is in her own way familiar with psychological issues, I certainly don’t think that those exist all in someone’s head. (Psychology pun intended) But I do think that because we (most of the people that I’ve known in my life as someone who comes from a relatively privileged background) have the ability to focus on less physical and need-oriented problems because our basic needs are met everyday. We are able to identify and seek treatment for diseases such as depression because we are not worried about the fact that our 6-month-old appears to be malnourished.

I’ve rarely talked about mental health issues in the host country population here and never talked to a Beninese doctor about them. But, most Beninese physicians are mainly focused on keeping their patients from dying from malaria.

And certainly my observations and theories have some holes. But what I’m really trying to say is it’s the urgency of the problems plaguing a population that is one of the factors that determines the kind of medical issues that are able to be diagnosed. Not that any issue is more important or more severe than another. Only that when I am nursing a high-grade fever and worrying that I’ve contracted malaria, I don’t have time to think about a lot of other things.