3,600,000~6,000,000 people have depression in Japan by WHO’s survey. This number amounts to roughly from three to five percent of the national population. When we look at it by generations, the trend is especially reflected by two generation classes. One is from teenagers to thirties, and the other is from middle-aged to the elderly. In teenagers to thirties, college students are especially easy targets of falling into depression because many of them live alone. How much to involve themselves in students’ lives depends on each university, which means that the less the administration intervenes, the more isolated the students become.
Recently many college students are falling into a new type of depression, which is different in many ways from the traditional image of depression. When college students fall into this new type of depression, their nearest counselor may be found in the university’s health center.
Psychiatrists Are Confused by College Students
“When we treat college students, we often make mistakes in diagnosis and treatment,” the psychiatrist Masashi Hori says. Intelligent college students often change their symptoms by themselves. That makes their condition unique, unclear, and vague. However, there is one more reason why their symptoms are unclear. That is the environment around them. Many of them come to him only by themselves because they live alone. “So we cannot get testimony by an objective third party. If we can get an objective testimony then we can diagnose more correctly. However, it is hard to find the third party,” he says.
Masashi Hori
teaches clinical psychology at Waseda University and works as a psychiatrist.
“College students’ character makes each one’s condition unique, unclear, and vague.”
The New Depression Makes Diagnosis More Complicated
Hori, who teaches psychology in Waseda University’s Department of Education points out, “Many youths recently have “atypical depression”, which is different from the traditional depression. Atypical depression was advanced in 1960s in the United States. MAO-Obstacle-medicine has effect on the atypical depression in foreign country. However in Japan, the medicine has less effect on the depression because cases in Japan also have the problem of their personality. This difference between Japan and other country has made by the nuance of “atypical ”
Japanese Specialists Have No Solid Definition
Hori says that in Japan, each depression specialist has his or her own definition of atypical depression and, as a result, treatments take a long time to be standardized. This brings about confusion in the actual medical field. Hori also explains, “In the United States, atypical depression has a firmly-fixed diagnosis standard and people who do not meet the standards are not diagnosed as such. In Japan, however, specialists do not yet recognize the atypical depression as its own disease. Therefore, whereas treatment methods for atypical depression are pretty much worked out in the United States, the same cannot be said about Japan because the atypical depression is called by so many names in this country. This confuses the doctors as many names mean many treatments.”
Plural Names Result in Misunderstanding
In Japan, there are a lot of names for atypical depression. For example, it is sometimes called an immature depression. “This labeling makes it sound as if the patient is acting selfishly, willfulnesslly, and egocentrically. However, in fact, this name refers not to the patient’s character but to the depression symptoms.” As this case illustrates, depression names can be deceiving and could evoke wrong images of the real disease.
“As a result, many people these days believe that atypical depression is not really depression. This in turn makes people who truly suffer from the atypical depression feel more depressed,” Hori says.
Another problem for depression of youths is occured, the self-diagnosed depressed. The depression for youths has two notable features. One is that many young people nowadays diagnose themselves as suffering from depression. The other is that such people think being depressed is the way to live. Hori points out there is the popular image of depressed people being taken care of by others, and this image results in people who want to be protected to want to go to a hospital and be diagnosed so they can start being protected by others. “But if they were truly depressed, then they would not have power to do even that,” he said. “Youths diagnose themselves as being medically depressed as soon as they are in low spirits. It is also true that such social background exists whereas young people are unable to complain and say ‘I can’t do this,’ or ‘I am in low spirits.’ All of this results in youths to convince themselves that they are suffering from depression. ”
College Students Is Hard to Discern
Psychiatrist Hori says, “If students want to be absent from school for a long time, there is no need to submit a medical note. They can be absent from school citing only private reasons. So it is hard to know why they want to do. Only their teacher knows the reason.” There is also a problem of how much the university would want to intervene in students’ lives.
Hori, who had taught at another university until last year, told the difference. In another school, if there are students staying away from school for a long time, the teachers would usually ask their friends in class for the reason of their absence. After that the teachers and friends visit the student, and, in some instances, the student is found in a critical mental state. “However at Waseda, teachers don’t do such a thing. They think that they should not intervene too much in the students’ private lives. There is a difference among colleges in how they handle their students. But I think even the universities entrust what their students do at their own responsibility. The colleges feel as if it is not their responsibility that the students become depressed,” he said.
Health Center Is the Nearest Place of Help
“It is hard to decide to go see a psychiatrist. Even once decided, you may not know among which of the many hospitals to choose from, and the hospital may be crowded. On the other hand, Waseda’s Health Center is easy to visit because it is located inside the University,” says Keiji Kashinoki, works at Waseda’s Hearth Center.
Waseda University actually has its own medical institution called the Health Center that has been operating since 1968. The Health Center accepts all inquiries ranging from such topics as study, family and mental problems. Now students from all departments can consult this service in their campuses and many people actually use it. Such health centers are commonplaces in national universities, but they are less common among private colleges. In fact, only Waseda and Keio Universities maintain their own medical institutions. Hence there is a movement right now among private schools to link with one another, and counselors working at Waseda, keio, Rikkyou, Meiji, Chuo, and hosei universities hold meetings to exchange information.
Waseda’s Health Center behind the Okuma Auditorium
The entrance of the center; students come to conference with counselor
The Demand for Health Center Is Increasing
“The number of students coming in to consult with us has been increasing,” Kashinoki who is the assistant supervisor of the Waseda’s Health Center says, “5127 cases came to us from 1215 people last year, and 73 percent of them were mental issues. This means that two percent of all Waseda University students use our center.” Waseda University has had two counselors working full-time since 2004, two more counselors were added in the beginning of last year. Kashinoki explains the reason as follows, “We increased the number of counselors not only because many students were coming to consult, but also because we aimed at keeping close contact with the university and with all of the departments. For example, if there is a student who comes to school with a mental problem but the counselor is working only on Wednesdays, then no one at the university can help the student on the other days. If there are multiple counselors available at hand, however, then the student can come to the center to receive help more easily.”
Keiji Kashinoki
is a clinical psychologist at Waseda University’s health center.
“For colloge students, the health center is easy to visit”
The Health Center Cannot Help All the Students
Health center works in liaison with the campus-wide health check-up held in April. “There are students who come to us. There are even students who are not currently going to classes but come to consult us. We work out a plan about how these students can return to school smoothly,” Kashinoki said. On the other hand, the Health Center cannot support all the students with mental problems because the counselors can only support Waseda students. Kashinoki regrets that.
“When students nearing graduation come to us, we instead refer them to other doctors because we know we cannot finish supporting them by the time they graduate. We must always think of what we can and cannot do for the students. ”
Need to Take New Steps for "Global 30"
The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has recently come up with the plan “Global 30”, which aims to invite some 300,000 foreign students to study in Japan. Waseda University is one of the 13 model universities chosen to be host schools. Under this plan, Waseda University plans to invite 3700 students this year. “The more students the university invites, the more problems we could potentially face including mental problems. It is good to invite many students from abroad, however, the university including the study-abroad center as well as the Health Center has to decide how to deal with the new problems that could arise,” Hori said. He gave a concrete example, “some students may speak only English, while others may not speak even English. We must think of how to treat them because such students cannot communicate in Japanese. If students come from different cultures, then it is difficult to understand what they mean by their expressions and so it would be difficult for Japanese doctors to diagnosis them. The university should make a system to support not only the students’ mental health but also their lives overall.”
BY Yukari Morito
EDITOR Ayuko Kiyoshi
