Japanese Rights Groups to Listen to Psychiatric Inpatients’ Problems

From Jiji Press

January 31 2022

OSAKA – In a coordinated campaign, rights advocacy groups in five prefectures in Japan will intensively take phone calls from psychiatric hospital inpatients on three days in February to hear their problems. 

The groups will intensively handle such calls on Feb. 2, Feb. 12 and Feb. 22. The campaign comes at a time when visits to psychiatric hospitals by the groups for meetings with inpatients have been restricted amid the coronavirus pandemic.

 “We hope that patients will talk to us about what they are suffering during their hospital stays,” said a member of one of the groups.

Psychiatric departments in Japan have about 320,000 beds. The figure accounts for one-fifth of psychiatric department beds in the world, with the number of such beds per capita far exceeding those in other countries, according to a support group.

Of about 270,000 psychiatric inpatients, about 50 pct are admitted forcibly to hospital without their consent. The number of cases in which inpatients are physically restrained is also on the rise.