Minami's Reviews

I have only watched attentively the first in the series: Discharged by Death: Inside a Japanese Mental Hospital, but I'm halfway through the second and last: Discharged by Death: The Deep Roots of Abuse. The series covers entrenched mistreatment at a psycho-renal hospital in Hachioji City, Tokyo: Takiyama Hospital.

In reality, what I found from the series is the hospital's failings were only a symptom. The greater cause was a society that is malfunctioning, I think, which the series covers quite well. The hospital was poorly run because the stakeholders - hospital management, government officials and even some of the families - did not have a heart to care for the mental-diabetic patients. First of all, the narrator told me that there were families, unwilling to risk their reputation in the community, who turned in their struggling sons/daughters/relatives in this hospital, then abandoned them to rot here. Then I heard the director and staff laugh in face of their struggling, and saw the patients wither under the beatings of the nurses (This is a renal and psychiatric hospital. How could someone beat up a patient in such a hospital?) Worse of all, in spite of the pleas of one of the patients' families to stop his treatment, they force-fed him more drugs to keep him alive for another month.

The reason such abuse is entrenched becomes easier to guess when it is revealed that the government apparently failed to prevent (or stop further instances of) the abuse. The director, Asakura, was the same one who oversaw the Asakura Hospital Incident 23 years ago (a similar case in Saitama in 2001 when patients died after being force-fed numerous needless therapies via the IV), yet he was granted another medical licence. Why didn't the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MLHW) Minister stop his application, despite having the powers to do so? The majority of patients came after being referred by local goverments in a twisted public assistance system, where the central government simply gives funds to the hospitals to receive these patients, who no chance for a second opinion. Where is the accountability for the funds and the treatment? Mr. Shuichiro, the MLHW's Mental and Disability Health Division chief, was even quoted as saying "Medical facilities cannot violate the rules excessively [...]". Notwithstanding the possibility that I misunderstood him, I can't help but say that these rules should not be violated at all! Why could he say something like that with a straight face? The twisted public assistance system with no oversight surely meant Takiyama Hospital had an incentive to give needless treatments to earn more government cash, and government regulation isn't being strict enough - this hospital should have been closed or nationalised long ago, and Asakura should have been banned from medicine.

It is important to note that not all hospitals in Japan deal with patients in such a disgusting manner - in fact, scores of doctors from reputable Japanese hospitals who appeared on the series to review the patient files concluded such treatment would be "unthinkable" in a regular psychiatry hospital. Yet in this case, there is such an entrenched lack of respect of patients suffering mental health issues that I can't help but wonder if there are even more hospitals in Japan with similar issues waiting to be exposed. I'm aware that mental health is still not being viewed with sympathy in Japan, so my conclusion is it can be quite dangerous to fall mentally sick in this country, especially for the less well-off.

Rank S for especially the exploration of the deeper issues surrounding patient treatment in Japanese psychiatry hospitals.

Caution: You will be seeing plenty of images of horrendous medical conditions in this documentary series - the products of the mistreatment of patients at Takiyama Hospital. Watch in a well-lit room.

Addendum: It is very unfortunate that Takiyama Hospital patients seeking treatment elsewhere have difficulty finding hospitals that can treat both their psychological and renal conditions, due to what I infer from the second episode to be a lack of publicly-owned hospitals with such capability. The hospital, in the meantime, was shown in said episode to be in unchanged condition, and some died before they could be transferred out due to preventable causes. In recent months, Japanese-language media has also reported that Asakura and the old management team has resigned, and the hospital has changed names to 希望の丘八王子病院 Hachioji Hills of Hope Hospital, with new management.