"I Don't Want to Cure It: Days at Higashimachi Clinic"

2020/08/24

Mental illness is a profoundly human condition, so it cannot be managed by medical care alone.

Saying such a thing would likely draw frowns from many experts. However, there are more than a few psychiatrists who believe that mental illness cannot be cured by medical care alone.

So, what should be done?

What else besides medical care is needed to cure mental illness? Is it even a curable disease in the first place? What does it actually mean to "cure mental illness"?

There are people who paused at that point before trying to cure it. Rather than just pausing, they were people who, through repeated failures, were at a loss and stood frozen. Eventually, they came to think: it's okay to be ill; I'm fine as I am. Let's live just as we are.

At the point where it seemed they had given up on everything, what they found was not despair or loneliness. It was human—truly human—laughter and peace of mind.

This book is a record of people who underwent such a transformation at a psychiatric clinic called "Higashimachi Clinic" in Urakawa Town, Hokkaido. What happened at this clinic was that when medical care reduced its role to the absolute minimum, patients appeared for the first time as the protagonists of their own illness. It showed that true recovery begins by prioritizing daily life, life in the community, and above all, connections with peers, and by speaking for oneself there.

In Urakawa Town, a group of people directly affected by mental illness called "Bethel's House" has been carrying out unique activities since the 1980s. Dr. Toshiaki Kawamura, who has supported them, discharged all patients hospitalized in the psychiatric ward and later opened Higashimachi Clinic in 2014. This clinic is now at the forefront of psychiatry in Japan—no, in the world. Is it just my delusion to think so?

Even if it is the cutting edge, what exists there is not the latest medical care, techniques, or outstanding talent. It was just people, simply continuing to think. They continued to think about how to live in a situation where nothing could be done, and each one of them became a philosopher.

"I Don't Want to Cure It: Days at Higashimachi Clinic"

Michio Saito

Misuzu Shobo

256 pages, 2,200 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.