"During the 77 days of physical detention, life in hell was worse than death."
"Tied to the bed, I couldn't turn over, I couldn't scratch my body, and the spiders falling from the ceiling were only a few centimeters from my face, but I couldn't avoid it at all..."
Miri Takeda, 27, recalls her experience 13 years ago and still can't contain her fears.
Suffering from an eating disorder, the 14-year-old was taken to a hospital in Tokyo and imprisoned for 77 days.
It started in the winter of her sophomore year of junior high school, when Miri inadvertently had the idea of losing weight after chatting with her classmates.
Adolescent children are extremely sensitive to all the wind and grass, and a sentence of "you weigh more than I thought" is enough to become a motivation for hard work.
But effort doesn't always work, and as long as she gains a little weight, she will over-control her calorie intake. Soon her menstrual leave had problems, her body was weak, and her mental state also plummeted.
Her parents were worried about her condition and took her to the hospital.
"Although I didn't know medical knowledge at the time, I thought that since the doctor said it was anorexia, it had to be treated. And when I heard that I was voluntarily admitted to the open ward, I was relieved to agree to the hospitalization. ”
"Everyone is worried about my body and I'm even happy. At that time, I thought that during the hospitalization, I could write letters to friends, meet with my family, and have a good relationship with the children in the same ward..."
Unexpectedly, this is the beginning of the nightmare.
On the day of hospitalization, her fantasies were shattered. She was taken deep inside the ward to an isolation chamber that resembled a single cell, with only beds and portable toilets. The windows with the iron fence were covered in shadows, and it was impossible to even judge the weather that day.
The first thing to do when admitted to the hospital is to check what you are carrying. Mobile phones, iPods, books, pens and paper were all taken away, and even contact lenses were not allowed to be brought in.
The attending doctor strictly required her to lie on the bed and not to move casually, and she would be reprimanded when she sat on the edge of the bed. Unauthorized use of the unobstructed portable toilet in the single room is also not allowed, and if you want to go to the toilet, you must get permission from the nurse and ask the nurse to confirm it after you finish it.
She was allowed free, leaving only to lie on the bed in the single room, waiting for the passage of time.
During the treatment, the attending physician is strictly required to eat at least two-thirds of the food provided. If it does not work out, it will use a "nasogastric tube" to deliver nutrients directly from the nose to the stomach.
Diagram
Television, reading, listening to music were forbidden, not to mention meeting with her parents and friends, not even writing letters and passing on messages, and her distrust of hospitals and attending doctors grew in her days of isolation from the outside world.
About a week after being hospitalized, her pleas to see her parents were rejected by the nurses. Dissatisfied with a series of treatments, she pulled out the drops herself and erupted in anger in the face of the attending doctor who had arrived.
Her appeal was not answered.
Four nurses pressed the hands and feet of the 14-year-old girl and wrapped them sharply around her with a flat and strong rope like a judo suit strap, and tied it under the bed railing.
After the body restraints on her hands, feet, and shoulders were over, the doctor inserted a gastric tube from her nostrils, which was thicker and harder than the one inserted in the gastroscope, 24 hours a day, and there was a constant blockage in her nose and throat.
The body is in great pain, but the consciousness is extremely clear.
During this time, all her actions were done in bed.
Urination is carried out in the form of a medical device that automatically aspirates urine. Until the muscle strength was restored after the restraint was lifted and he was able to go to the toilet by himself, the urinary apparatus was worn continuously for about 2 and a half months.
(Schematic)
The pain and discomfort of the nasal insertion of the gastric tube is so strong that the pain in the urethra is so deep that I feel extremely ashamed.
Even more shameful is defecation, because I have been wearing a diaper, and when I defecate, I have to call the nurse, let the nurse take off the diaper, and put the bedpan between the buttocks and the bed. If there is no bowel movement for 3 days, the stool will be forced through an enema.
According to her, what she experienced was "the hell of the limit."
But after she was discharged from the hospital, she was not compensated because of the lack of valid evidence that she could not prove that she had been abused in the hospital.
The hospital judged that if the detention was suspended, she might pull out the drip herself and develop suicidal tendencies, with the possibility of self-injurious behavior. They could not give a method other than physical control, so they could only continue to restrict her personal freedom.
She couldn't prove that her state was moribund at the time, and that the "psychiatric therapy" was like a huge black box that obscured all the facts inside.
Haruka Sakurai, a woman in her 30s in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, has experienced similar forced imprisonment.
A few years ago, she was suddenly forcibly pulled into a van by a group of strange and strong men, pulled to a psychiatric hospital for isolation and treatment, and experienced painful insults and threats.
Sakurai gave birth to her eldest son unmarried in 2016 and became a single mother.
Haruka Sakurai (pseudonym) interviewed
However, the child welfare agencies judged that she was still working in the later stages of pregnancy, did not prepare a baby bathroom, and rented a room that was only 9 square meters in size, and judged that she did not have the ability to raise children.
According to the requirements of the municipal government, in this case, the child will be managed by the relevant agencies.
Sakurai was unable to accept the city government's request to forcibly take the child away, and there were many disputes with the relevant personnel, and eventually won back the custody of the child.
But life has not returned to calm. The day after that, walking on the road, she was asked by the city clerk to "have a good talk", and after she got into the staff's van, several strange men suddenly took over the car.
Later, she learned that these strong men were so-called "civil transfer operators" who specialized in helping to deal with some transportation tasks that were inconvenient for the official to perform.
The van she was riding in end was the city's designated psychiatric hospital.
Sakurai was sent to a psychiatric hospital for "treatment" for resisting city regulations and not handing over her children, but she did not receive any effective treatment.
At first, she was taken to an isolation room with only one futon and a Japanese toilet, and was locked up for 4 days.
Then there's the endless perfunctory perfunctory of the doctors. In this hospital, mild patients are cared for serious patients. Mediate quarrels between hospitalized patients, calm down patients who are noisy at night, let dementia patients who go out go back to their rooms... These tasks fell on Sakurai's head.
She was barred from contact with the outside world, and the conditions for her discharge became increasingly confused, and eventually she was transferred to a welfare home for disabled patients, the "Collective Home".
There, she was forced to do about 6 hours of manufacturing work a day. When the occupants are reluctant to enter the workshop, the operators of the welfare home use spare keys to enter the rest room to insult and threaten the occupants.
By the time she truly regained her freedom and met her child again, it would have been a year later.
"Not only were they separated from their children, but they were also forcibly admitted to psychiatric hospitals without formal examination, and even forcibly relocated to facilities that cared for the disabled."
"The executive branch that is leading all this and the hospitals and practitioners who follow this behavior are absolutely unforgivable."
After that, Sakurai filed a lawsuit against Ibaraki Prefecture, the city that decided to transfer, the psychiatric hospital, the private transfer operator, and the collective home for the disabled, demanding compensation for the damages.
Although the municipal government advocates that the transfer is not mandatory, from her experience, it is obvious that the use of mental illness to cover up everything is obviously not self-justified.
Under what circumstances can the personal freedom of the "mentally ill" be forcibly controlled? In general, an exception to controlling a patient's freedom can only be made if a qualified mental health care practitioner believes that there is no other way.
However, in recent years, the incidence of personal control incidents in the field of mental medicine in Japan has doubled, and it is also a significantly higher level worldwide.
In this case, the psychiatric hospital becomes a "black box" that covers up all unreasonable treatment and detention behavior, and the "patients" who are forcibly detained in the box face unforgettable pain.
Japan's medical and administrative powers are given a lot of discretion, so even if a complaint is received, it may not be properly handled, let alone an institution to conduct an objective review of it.
The administrative department will not respond head-on, but entrust medical institutions or private enterprises to adopt coping therapy through transfer and other means, or simply cover up.
The medical side also believes that long-term hospitalization can increase income, so it always allows "patients" to be hospitalized and so-called treatment is carried out without considering the specific state.
So we see that some people have experienced 77 days of hellish bondage, some people have been transferred to various institutions as laborers, some people have been imprisoned for 4 years, and even if they want to talk to their families, they can't achieve it...
This year, their experiences were published in a book, and more people had the opportunity to see the darkness in it.
As for whether the situation of mental health care being "closed" will be improved, and whether the eyes of the outside world can finally be projected into the "black box" where all unreasonable things are covered up.
Perhaps only time will give the answer.