Tag Archives: the Berlin Wall

November 03

The Berlin Wall Disease

As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, I am reminded of Mauerkrankheit, or the ‘Wall Disease.’ In 1973, East German psychiatrist Dietfried Müller-Hegemann observed that his patients who lived close to the Berlin Wall showed higher rates of psychosis, schizophrenia, and phobias. Those East Germans who lived in the shadow […]