I Was a Caged Bird: Psychiatric Hospitalization in Japan

Overview

Japan is a psychiatric hospital superpower. About 20% of all the psychiatric hospital beds in the world are concentrated in Japan, where many patients are confined for long periods of time. The United Nations and the World Health Organization have criticized this situation as a serious violation of human rights, but the actual conditions have been largely hidden from sight in Japan. However, after the 2011 nuclear power accident, the problem has begun to come into view. There are people who have spent more than half of their lives in the hospital. Others never required hospitalized care in the first place. The program follows the lives of a number of these patients and examines the reasons behind this problem.