A proposed revision to the law on mental health and welfare seeks to provide continued medical treatment and support for people who are discharged after being ordered hospitalized by local government heads due to mental disorders. The government drew criticism for characterizing it as a legislative effort to prevent crimes like the July 2016 massacre of 19 residents at a care home for disabled people in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, whose accused perpetrator had been hospitalized under such a program several months before the attack. Critics charge that it is irrelevant to expect psychiatric treatment to serve the purpose of preventing crimes. Mental patients and their families express concern that the involvement of the police in the rehabilitation efforts of hospitalized patients could lead to tightened surveillance of the patients.

The ruling coalition passed the amendment in the Upper House last week and sent it to the Lower House after the government denied that the proposed measure is aimed at crime prevention or surveillance of mental patients — and deleted the reference to the amendment as a legislative response to the Sagamihara killings in a document distributed to Diet members explaining the gist of the revision. The government needs to make more efforts to win the understanding of patients, their families and other parties, without which the program's effective implementation will be difficult.

The mental health and welfare law gives prefectural governors and mayors of major cities the power to commit people with mental disorders to hospitals for treatment when their conditions are deemed to pose a risk of harming either themselves or others. Satoshi Uematsu, who has been indicted on charges of murdering 19 people and injuring 24 others in the stabbing spree at the Sagamihara facility, was hospitalized briefly in February last year under this program after he disclosed plans to mass murder people with disabilities in a letter he delivered to the official residence of the Lower House speaker. But he dropped off the authorities' radar after he was discharged from the hospital until the killing spree in late July. It was exposed that information about Uematsu's problematic behavior and remarks, including statements that smacked of eugenics, had not been adequately shared among relevant authorities, including local governments and the police.