Does Your Soul Have a Cold? is a new documentary from film maker Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) about depression in Japan. Apparently, before about 2000, depression was not thought of as an illness in Japan. Those with depressed relatives tended to just tuck them away at home.
Then, over the past seven years or so, the pharmaceutical companies came in with massive educational and promotional campaigns (the phrase "does your soul have a cold?" is actually a GlaxoSmithKline marketing slogan). The result is that now most everyone knows about depression. Unfortunately, they also seem to have a somewhat dysfunctional idea of how to treat it. Because depression was introduced by drug companies, it's thought of largely as something you pop pills for: almost none of the subjects in the movie get any kind of counseling.
The film focuses on a half dozen people, following them as they struggle with their disease. Unfortunately, the only one that seems to get better is the one who reads everything he can on depression, and figures out supplemental ways of treating himself (keeping a diary of his sleeping patterns, for example, so he can see when he's coming off the rails).
The movie is a bit heavy handed with the drug companies (yes, they popularized depression to their own ends, but at least people are starting to deal with it now), but nonetheless is interesting as both an atmospheric look at a particular slice of Japan and a thought-proker on very idea of depression.
