Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll Of Living Up Against A Border

We build border walls to keep danger out. But do we understand the danger posed by walls themselves?East Germans were the first to give the crisis a name: Mauerkrankheit, or wall disease. The afflictedeveryday citizens living on both sides of the Berlin walldisplayed 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 USMexico border wall instills more feelings of fear than of safety. And in eastern Europe, a Georgian grandfather pines for his homelandcut off from his daughters, his baker, and his bank by the arbitrary path of a razorwire 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 safelyso, 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 diseaseand illuminates how neither those outside nor inside are immune.