Suicide in Twentieth-Century Japan by Francesca Di Marco

Author:Francesca Di Marco [Marco, Francesca Di]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Death & Dying, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781317384281
Google: czp-CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-29T02:52:17+00:00

A collective experience: suicide as a social by-product

Although much effort was directed toward understanding the mental states of suicidal patients, regrettably psychologists failed to translate individual stories, diagnoses, and treatments into a comprehensive theoretical apparatus. Furthermore, the departure of the American occupiers, advocates of American psychoanalytic psychiatry, left psychologists unprotected against the revival of the biological model and with no time to further consolidate their achievements. As rightly suggested by Okada Yasuo, eminent psychiatrist-historian and prolific researcher and writer, when the American occupation ended, a new phase began in the history of medicine in Japan. 27 Between 1952 and 1960, the nation’s vibrant, autochthonous biopsychiatric movement came to the fore, defending the validity of the discipline of psychiatry and warding off further American psychoanalytic influence and intrusion into psychiatric practice. Large institutions, with their growing influence on the medical field, had a major effect on this renewed enthusiasm. This dramatic change did not, though, happen overnight, and the retreat of the occupying forces does not entirely explain why psychiatrists managed to reestablish the predominance of neurobiology as the model of mental illness within academic and clinical walls.

Firstly, on the academic front, several intellectual leaders of psychiatry began to express skepticism about American psychoanalytic psychiatry. In particular, psychiatrists affiliated with Tokyo University soon mobilized to critique psychoanalysis and to reinstate Kraepelinian neurobiology as the official paradigm of Japanese psychiatry. In 1952, the Public Mental Hygiene Research Lab [Kokuritsu Seishin Eisei Kenkyūjo] was founded, reestablishing neurobiology as the supreme model of experimentation. Later, new academic journals were published aiming to rebuild biopsychiatry’s credibility. In 1959, for example, Seishin Igaku [Clinical Psychiatry], an elite academic journal comparable to Seishin Shinkeigaku Zasshi [Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica], issued its first volume. Furthermore, psychiatric associations and symposia recorded a progressively higher number of attendees. Beginning in 1960, the Japanese Annual Conference of Neuropsychiatry, later incorporated into the Annual Conference of Neuropathology, had large numbers of participants; it gradually became a vibrant intellectual arena for medical professionals interested in biopsychiatry and neurobiology.

Secondly, postwar economic policies aimed at reconstructing the domestic market gradually transformed medical care, inaugurating a prosperous time for clinical psychiatrists. The initial steps toward socio-economic recovery fueled massive migrations from rural areas to larger metropolitan areas, as individuals sought better jobs and education. The result was not only the beginning of a process of urbanization, but also the inauguration of mass consumption, which soon led to an increased interest in broader access to medical care. As demand for medical and mental health services increased, the number of hospitals and providers grew. Demand was also bolstered by the collapse of the ie system [family system] under the new Civil Law of 1947 and the outlawing of private detention under the 1950 Mental Hygiene Act. 28 Both of these policy changes reinforced the idea of hospitals as the new loci of confinement. The number of psychiatric hospitals as well as the number of beds dedicated to psychiatric patients skyrocketed. 29 Fur thermore, in 1958 the National Health

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