Social inclusion of psychiatry users in Urakawa: a study on the neighbors of Urakawa Bethel's House (poster presentation)
Chikako Yamaki, NRCD Research Institute
Co-author(s): Kohei Yamane, Hiroshi Kawamura
Abstract
Psychiatric disorders are the illness to be the most highly stigmatised by people in society. Persons with psychiatric disorders have been devalued and discriminated against because of the stigma associated with the diagnosis, resulting in self-non-identification, a life of rejection and social isolation. Japan is no exception to this trend. It can be said that they face much more social difficulties rather than problems concerning the illness or the diagnosis. For instance, persons with psychiatric difficulties have likely been facing against the community neighbours from building their living set-ups or even small-scaled workshops. The Urakawa Bethel's House, a community living group of persons with psychiatric difficulties in Hokkaido, is quite well-known for their unique living styles in Japan. The primary reason is that the users of the Bethel's House are very open to their identification of the diagnosis and have set up several group-homes for themselves and lived in there as the Urakawa town residents. Secondly, they name their own diagnosis by themselves and can tell their functioning styles by sharing these problems within the group members to cope with any concerns, fears and angers brought up in their social life. Thirdly, they have kept in good communication with psychiatric medications and to psychiatric practitioners. In this study, the attitudes of the Urakawa population toward the Bethel's House members to live with in the community or the issues the population have against the members are explored in order to adopt the Bethel's House living styles for any other communities. Data: Ethnographic interviews were conducted on thirteen neighbours of the group-home residents from the Bethel's House. The neighbours' impression under the daily social interaction with the Bethel's members or their concerns for the Bethel's members were examined. Findings: Results of the interviews revealed the following points : (1) the members' daily socially deviated behaviours rather than the problems related to the illness itself, such as rubbish dump, smoking on the street and lack of socialization (2)complaints on the members' living styles, such as the ambiguity of responsibility on something that happens in daily life, the untrustworthiness toward the unfamiliar persons with mental disorders who are not willing to meet the neighbours and the wariness toward careless handling of fire since the members are unlikely to do cleaning-up their ashtray in their room (3)advantage of living with them mostly is the economical effects since 2,000 visitors and more have come to see how it goes in Urakawa (4) the public understandings of the goodness and strengths that the individuals with mental disorders have. Conclusion: the general population has the tendency to label the Bethel's members as persons with mental disorders and the labelling was surfaced in the deviated behaviour from the daily societal rules coming out. In contrast, the public understandings of the goodness and the strengths of mental disorders has improved in increasing the opportunities to interact and socialize with the individual members even though the labelling is surfaced. Now Practical suggestion for the social inclusion will be discussed any further.