Lost Lives - The Living Hell

[Steve Bildermann]

Stigmatized, abandoned, often locked up, Asia's mentally ill are left to inhabit a living hell. A TIME special report By Hannah Beech

http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501031110/story.html

If a boy disappears and nobody notices, is he really gone? Hisaki Fujishiro's withdrawal had been almost imperceptible, as hard to gauge as the ebb of a high tide. Even his mother failed to see the signposts, Fujishiro recalls: the elementary-school bullying that broke one of his fingers, the obsession with computer games, the increasing hours spent cloistered in his cluttered bedroom. These were, it seemed, the normal teethings of a preteen in postindustrial Tokyo, just another geeky kid wandering awkwardly through childhood. But gradually Fujishiro retreated completely.

The phenomenon of social withdrawal, or hikikomori was first drawn to the attention of the Japanese public following a series of highly publicised crimes.
Two years ago, a 17 year old hikikomori sufferer left his isolation and hijacked a bus, killing a passenger.

Another kidnapped a girl and held her captive in his bedroom for nine years.

Japan - The Missing Millions - BBC Article on Hikikomori

Hikikomori violence

[Taro Toporific]

Stigmatized, abandoned, often locked up, Asia's mentally ill are left to inhabit a living hell

".... left to inhabit a living hell"

[Nagged]

Just came back to town last night after a few days in the country.

It's little wonder that this kind of thing is happening and on the increase.

Living in a world of pain and hurt, there are some very sick people just outside your front door...

[Big Booger]

I wonder if this happens in other parts of the world? I've never heard of a case in the US, UK, Canada, Oz, etc... but then that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, maybe adults with a fear of crowds or something like that... but I've never heard of it in adolescents.

This is why proper and full acceptance of mental health care is so crucial. Here it is stigmatised so much that people rarely seek help especially when they really need it like in the case of hikikomori.

[Taro Toporific]

I... Here it is stigmatised so much that people rarely seek help especially when they really need it like in the case of hikikomori.

During risutora/restructuring here at Maybe-the-Largest Inc., the redundant guys were flipping out at a rate of 20 percent. That is, 20% of the worse-than-useless folks (rather than just useless like me and the rest) who were being fired were under outpatient treatment at the company hospital. "Treatment" was only pharmacological. The folks in my office building were more self-medicated than a college dorm on Halloween and twice as freaky looking.

Now two years and 3 suicides later, my office is smaller and has a few very sharp Chinese engineer replacements. Just a few drugs made a whole world of difference --BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY(tm) and rational accounting.

Bottom Line: Japan needs more drugs.

Oh and Nick Baker deserves the Emperor's Chrysanthemum medal.