Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border

Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border

Wapner, Jessica

Paperback

General Political ScienceGeneral PsychologyImmigration & Refugees

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1615197346
ISBN13: 9781615197347
Publisher: Experiment
Published: Oct 6 2020
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.25
Height: 0.60 Width: 4.90 Depth: 7.40
Language: English
East Germans were the first to give the crisis a name: Mauerkrankheit, or wall disease. The afflicted--everyday citizens living on both sides of the Berlin wall--displayed some combination of depression, anxiety, excitability, suicidal ideation, and paranoia. The Berlin Wall is no more, but today there are at least seventy policed borders like it. What are they doing to our minds?

Jessica Wapner investigates, following a trail of psychological harm around the world. In Brownsville, Texas, the hotly contested US-Mexico border wall instills more feelings of fear than of safety. And in eastern Europe, a Georgian grandfather pines for his homeland--cut off from his daughters, his baker, and his bank by the arbitrary path of a razor-wire fence built in 2013. Even in borderlands riven by conflict, the same walls that once offered relief become enduring reminders of trauma and helplessness.

Our brains, Wapner writes, devote border cells to where we can and cannot go safely--so, a wall that goes up in our town also goes up in our minds. Weaving together interviews with those living up against walls and expert testimonies from geographers, scientists, psychologists, and other specialists, she explores the growing epidemic of wall disease--and illuminates how neither those outside nor inside are immune.

Also in

Immigration & Refugees

View All