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

Publish: August 24, 2020

Writer Profile

  • Michio Saito

    Other : Journalist

    ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ alumni

    Michio Saito

    Other : Journalist

    ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ alumni

Mental illness is a preeminently human illness, so it cannot be handled by medical care alone.

Saying such a thing would likely draw the frowns of many experts. However, even among psychiatrists, there are more than a few 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 this even a curable disease in the first place? What does it actually mean to "cure mental illness"?

Before curing it, there are people who stopped at such a point. Rather than simply stopping, they were people who became lost and stood paralyzed after repeated failures. Eventually, they came to think: it is okay to be ill, and it is okay to stay as I am. Let us 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¡ªtruly human¡ªlaughter 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 limit, patients appeared for the first time as the protagonists of their own illness. It showed that true recovery begins by valuing daily life, life in the community, and above all, connections with peers, and by speaking about oneself there.

In Urakawa Town, a group of people with lived experience called "Bethel's House" has been developing unique activities since the 1980s. Dr. Toshiaki Kawamura, who has supported them, discharged all patients who were hospitalized in psychiatry and subsequently opened Higashimachi Clinic in 2014. This clinic is now at the forefront of psychiatry in Japan, and indeed 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 human resources. Ordinary people simply continued to think. They continued to think about how to live even in situations where nothing could be done, and each person became a philosopher.

Michio Saito

Misuzu Shobo

256 pages, 2,200 yen (excluding tax)

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

Writing Notes