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E-book
Author Nakamura, Karen, 1970- author.

Title A Disability of the Soul : an Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan / Karen Nakamura
Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 248 pages) : illustrations
Contents A Disability of the Soul -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Language -- CHAPTER ONE: Arrivals -- Memory and Catharsis: Kiyoshi's Story -- CHAPTER TWO: Psychiatry in Japan -- Coming of Age in Japan: Rika's Story -- CHAPTER THREE: Hokkaido and Christianity -- CHAPTER FOUR: The Founding of Bethel -- UFOs and Other Mass Delusions: Kohei's Story -- CHAPTER FIVE: The Doctor and the Hospital -- Thirty-Seven Years of Institutionalization: Why Did Yuzuru Never Want to Leave the Hospital? -- CHAPTER SIX: Bethel Therapies: Peer Support and a Meaningful Life: Gen's Story -- CHAPTER SEVEN: Departures -- CHAPTER EIGHT: Beyond Bethel: A Postscript -- Notes -- References -- Index
Summary 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. Through its work programs, communal living, and close relationship between hospital and town, Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul, Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives, their illnesses, and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative, insightful ethnographic vignettes, and compelling life stories, her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks, its promises and limitations. The book is accompanied by a DVD containing two fascinating documentaries about Bethel made by the author--Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan and A Japanese Funeral (winner of the Society for Visual Anthropology Short Film Award and the Society for East Asian Anthropology David Plath Media Award). A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Beteru no Ie (Urakawa-chō, Japan)
SUBJECT Beteru no Ie (Urakawa-chō, Japan) fast
Subject Mentally ill -- Rehabilitation -- Japan -- Urakawa-chō
Schizophrenics -- Rehabilitation -- Japan -- Urakawa-chō
Community mental health services -- Japan -- Urakawa-chō
Mental illness -- Social aspects -- Japan
Schizophrenia -- Social aspects -- Japan
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Security.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Services & Welfare.
Community mental health services
Mental illness -- Social aspects
Mentally ill -- Rehabilitation
Schizophrenia -- Social aspects
Schizophrenics -- Rehabilitation
Japan
Japan -- Urakawa-chō
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2012050910
ISBN 0801467993
9780801467998
1322503966
9781322503967