Description
Book SynopsisThis is a terrific book?moving, clear, and compassionate. It not only illustrates the way psychiatric illness is shaped by culture, but also suggests that social environments can be used to improve the course and outcome of the illness. Well worth reading.
T. M. Luhrmann, author of Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist looks at American Psychiatry
Bethel House, located in a small fishing village in northern Japan, was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique, community approach to psychosocial recovery, Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach, Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill, but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Thr
Trade Review
In every respect, Nakamura has produced two films and a book that work against stigma and call attention to mental illness as a disability and to the humanity of those who suffer from it. These texts will be of broad interest beyond the world of Japan studies, particularly to clinicians and human rights activists who are looking for ways to do better for the mentally ill.
-- Amy Borovoy * The Journal of Japanese Studies *
Written in plain language and told in a narrative style, accompanied by a DVD containing two documentary videos and filled with a host of pictures, this easily accessible and deeply engaging work combines broad historical, social, and cultural context with intimate personal experiences and poignantly articulated vignettes to immerse the reader in the lives of members of Bethel House, the professional staff who work with them and the residents of the town of Urakawa located on the island of Hokkaido, Japan.
-- Michael Rembis * Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *
In A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan, anthropologist and professor of East Asian Studies, Karen Nakamura provides the type of thick description and careful analysis called for by Mehrotra [author of Disability, Gender and State Policy: Exploring Margins]. Written in plain language and told in a narrative style... this easily accessible and deeply engaging work combines broad historical, social, and cultural context with intimate personal experiences and poignantly articulated vignettes to immerse the reader.
* disability studies quarterly *
Table of ContentsChapter 1. ArrivalsLife Story 1. Memory and Catharsis: Kiyoshi's StoryChapter 2. Psychiatry in JapanLife Story 2. Coming of Age in Japan: Rika's StoryChapter 3. Christianity in Japan and the Establishment of Hokkaido
Chapter 4. The Founding of BethelLife Story 3. UFOs and Other Mass Delusions: Kohei's StoryChapter 5. The Doctor and the HospitalLife Story 4. 37 Years of Institutionalization: Why Did Yuzuru Never Want to Leave the Hospital?Chapter 6. Bethel TherapiesLife Story 5. Peer Support and a Meaningful Life: Gen's StoryChapter 7. DeparturesChapter 8. Beyond Bethel: A PostscriptNotes
References
Index
