The health and welfare ministry has decided to allow mental hospitals to renovate some wards into residences for long-term inpatients, who would be discharged before being moved into the new residences. In this manner the ministry hopes to reduce the official number of mental inpatients. But such a step will do little to help mental patients return to a normal social life. The ministry should withdraw the plan and work out measures that will achieve real results in promoting the rehabilitation of such patients in a true community environment.
Behind the ministry's plan is the idea of reducing the number of sickbeds in Japan's mental hospitals, which now stands at some 344,000. This figure is the largest in the world and accounts for about 19 percent of the estimated 1.85 million beds for mental patients at institutions worldwide.
According to a 2011 survey by the ministry, 323,000 people were registered as inpatients at Japanese mental hospitals. Some 200,000 of them had been hospitalized for more than one year. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that this number is conspicuously high among its 34 industrialized member countries. In addition, some 65,000 mental patients had been hospitalized for more than 10 years.