Lost Lives: Living with mental illness in Asia

November 24, 2003 1:17 PM

Lost Lives "A generation of Japanese youngsters has dropped out of society entirely, unable to cope, it seems, with the rapid syncopation of life in Asia's most developed nation. The phenomenon has been dubbed hikikomori, or social withdrawal, by psychiatrist Tamaki Saito, who estimates that one in every 40 Japanese households has such a loner. That's an astounding 1 million social dropouts". Great article on Asia and how its countries deal/don't deal with mental illness.
posted by SpaceCadet (15 comments total)

who are struggling to keep up with the manic pace of change.
posted by thomcatspike at 1:28 PM on November 24, 2003

Previous discussion on the hikikomori.
posted by homunculus at 1:32 PM on November 24, 2003

sans snark: previously (on preview, Damn! Beat by homunculus!)
see also.
posted by shoepal at 1:38 PM on November 24, 2003

Oh well, hope someone reads the other 4 pages about Cambodia, S Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan and China....typical for me to quote one paragraph (about hikikomori) out of 4 pages (about mental illness in Asia) to make it look like a double-post :-(
posted by SpaceCadet at 2:18 PM on November 24, 2003

Bald assertion: this is not a double post. It's a topic that has been discussed previously, but adamgreenfield's previous link was to a different page and over a year ago. Are we not allowed to discuss a topic more than once in all eternity? If so, I never expect to see another thread about Iraq or Bush or pancakes. We've been there, done that.
posted by jfuller at 3:04 PM on November 24, 2003

SpaceCadet, fwiw, I enjoyed the article and I don't think homunculus or I were indicating double post, so much as the fact that hikikomori had been discussed before.
posted by shoepal at 3:26 PM on November 24, 2003

Just a data point: my friend's brother was a serious hikkikomori for a few years and was only gradually brought out of the house by his sister's new husband, who worked hard to get him to articulate his dreams and to take steps towards them. This is reality in Japan, I have seen it. Scary stuff.
posted by gen at 6:26 PM on November 24, 2003

I might be a career hikkikomori, although I actually get out a fair amount. But, somehow, human industrial culture always seems to leave me depressed and so restricted environments seem attractive by comparison. One therapy - which I have yet to take up - involves deep immersion in nature.

Also - I wonder how the shifting endocrinal balances among males and females are implicated in this syndrome? (many persistant organic industrial pollutants mimic estrogens)
posted by troutfishing at 8:45 PM on November 24, 2003

I thought a more accurate translation of hikikomori was "violent solitude."
posted by kevspace at 11:01 PM on November 24, 2003

The attitude toward the mentally ill that the article describes rings absolutely true. My mother (we are Chinese) has only spoken to her brother a few times since he was committed to (what I assume was) a psychiatric facility over a decade ago. He had been suicidal. I don't know if he's still there today. My mom has never told me. After I went through a depression myself a few years ago, I came to realize what role the need for affection and approval played in my illness. Knowing that my mom hasn't talked to my uncle in years really tears at me for his sake. My mother is afraid and ashamed of her brother and does not seem interested in contacting him. Meanwhile, at least half of the Chinese families I know have histories of physical or emotional abuse, or some member who quietly developed ulcers the last time they were demoted or laid off at work, broke up with a signifcant other, and so on. There is truly a lot of suffering going on here.
posted by halonine at 2:05 AM on November 25, 2003 [1 favorite]

I found the article heart wrenching. Of course, it was not what I expected when I clicked on the link.

Why is it that out of a 5-page article that concerns many Asian countries, some of which have truly horrifying conditions for mental patients, only Japan with its new relative of anxiety disorder gets quoted on the front page? Is it because people care more about a new mental disorder in Japan than that "in Cambodia, there is not a single inpatient mental hospital, and the nation has only 20 psychiatrists"? It seems to be a good illustration that hikikomori (which is being recognized now and treated) was the only subject mentioned, when other subjects described in the article continued to be ignored just as mental patients are ignored in the countries mentioned.
posted by adzuki at 7:05 AM on November 25, 2003

I wonder how much of this mental illness, and how much is just "real" non-conformity, that is, the inability or unwillingness to fit into society's mold.
In all fairness, modernity is a far stretch from a "natural" lifestyle. A person must almost exhaust themselves to conform to the "norm." Yet 99% of this effort is not essential, or even important, in their life.
And yet, unless you "dress for success", society easily relegates you to almost non-personhood--from which point it must be easy to become a agoraphobic, a shut-in.

But the vicious axiom of society is that "anybody" can become like "everybody". "Anybody" can conform to wearing a fashionable suit, being the ideal weight, working at a 9 to 5 job, a good little consumer-voter, being married with 2.5 children, etc. ad nauseam.

Institutionalizing non-conformists is just compounding cruelty. But by the time someone would become a hikikomori, I would expect them to be so utterly exhausted they would have no strength left to leave their cage and strike out, hoping for a better life elsewhere, in some situation more suitable to their personal design specifications. In some society where they can be themselves, yet prosper.
posted by kablam at 7:41 AM on November 25, 2003

I read the paper version a couple of weeks ago, and found it interesting, although maybe it conflates several different phenomena... the 'hikikomori' phenomenon in a highly developed economy such as Japan may have different causes and be of a different kind to the types of mental illness in a country such as Cambodia (or other war-torn nations), where it seems that much of the population is suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, with few resources to deal with it. Islamic and Confucian cultures are also very different. What 'society' means to a country such as Cambodia is very different to Japan - comparing the two just because they are on the same continent seems to be a bit like comparing Switzerland with Kosovo.

It seems more appropriate to compare Cambodia with, say, Sierra Leone or Guatemala, and Japan with western Europe or the US...

That said, the phenomenon of 'saving face' is common to many Asian societies, be they Confucian, Islamic or whatever, so maybe this is a single common factor.
posted by plep at 8:05 AM on November 25, 2003

Why is it that out of a 5-page article that concerns many Asian countries, some of which have truly horrifying conditions for mental patients, only Japan with its new relative of anxiety disorder gets quoted on the front page? Is it because people care more about a new mental disorder in Japan than that "in Cambodia, there is not a single inpatient mental hospital, and the nation has only 20 psychiatrists"? It seems to be a good illustration that hikikomori (which is being recognized now and treated) was the only subject mentioned, when other subjects described in the article continued to be ignored just as mental patients are ignored in the countries mentioned.


adzuki, I totally agree with you. On reflection it was more to do with my own experience in Japan than the article as a whole. It really is a fantastic article, but I realise now a lot of Japanophiles are going to skip over it when they read "hikikomori" as it's been discussed already ad-nauseum (I later found out).

Still I think there is a lot in common with the Asian countries in that confusian thinking smudges over the thorny issue of mental illness (keep it out of sight and out of mind).
posted by SpaceCadet at 8:06 AM on November 25, 2003

(Or, the mental illnesses suffered by people in Cambodia and Pakistan seem to be those associated with underdevelopment; the Japanese 'hikikomori' seems to be more to do with the opposite - hyper-development, if you will).

SpaceCadet :- Yes, the proverbial Confucian 'shame' culture thing seems to be the one common factor, and one which has been noted in even countries with non-Confucian cultures (e.g. the Indian subcontinent). It'd be interesting to see if this occurs in a mostly Christian Asian culture, such as the Philippines...
posted by plep at 8:10 AM on November 25, 2003