Hikikomori, the prison inside

[dorchadas]

Just read this article about hikikomori (引きこもり, "shut-ins") and esepcially in light of reading The Body Keeps the Score, I really appreciate how some parts of Japanese society are starting to take a different tack toward the treatment of hikikomori. Rather than just assuming they're lazy, some people are starting to look at the roots of why people would voluntarily withdraw from society to such an extreme degree and, surprise, it's often because of trauma:

“The structure of Japanese society makes it difficult for people to get back on the rails once they have come off them,” says journalist Masaki Ikegami, who has written about hikikomori issues for more than 20 years. “I think the majority of hikikomori are people who have had difficulty in their working life and have been scarred by their human relationships there.”

That's a much better approach than the people who forcefully drag hikikomori back out into the world, which is just going to retraumatize them.

There's a single-player tabletop RPG game called Hikikomori, about a week in the life of a shut-in written out in diary format, and almost a decade ago I played through it. The way that game went reminds me of the quote in that article that:

Saito explains that bad relationships in the family are often the root cause of social withdrawal, and that a hikikomori is unlikely to escape his or her situation without help from an outside party. This could come from an old friend, teacher or relative who intervenes in a nonforceful way, prompting the hikikomori to seek professional counseling.

That's basically how that game went, until the friend moved on with his life and left the protagonist alone. And not everything has a good friend like that. But treating this as a trauma issue rather than as a lack of willpower would almost certainly have a greater effect and be a better way to reintegrate people into society.

It would also be much more expensive, so it'll never catch on.