When we debate the US-Mexico border wall we talk about its most obvious effect: the physical
separation of people. But it turns out that there's another consequence that afflicts all those
near a border whether they're being entrapped by it or simply living near it: deleterious
mental health effects. A growing body of research is proving that boundaries harm our brains.
Foundational studies were done in the late nineteen-sixties on the effects of the Berlin Wall
uncovering cases of Berliners who were despondent excitable suicidal paranoid and more.
Researchers gave the overarching condition a name: wall disease. Science journalist Jessica
Wapner builds on this research following the trail of psychological harm around the
world--there are at least seventy border walls today from the seventeen hundred miles of
barbed wire walling off Bangladesh from India to a five-layer fence stretches about six
hundred miles between Saudi Arabia and Iraq to the anti-immigration barriers between Bulgaria
and Turkey South Africa and Mozambique Hungary and Croatia and more. Weaving together
interviews with those living up against walls with expert testimony from psychologists
economists geographers and other specialists who are publishing groundbreaking reports in
outlets such as the Journal of Borderland Studies she explores how borders affect the people
who live near them in unforeseen ways. Whatever side of the political divide we fall on we
would do well to understand the inescapable toll of living up against a wall.
