Hikikomori

All of us tried to be a hikikomori for a while, but we failed. Don’t you trust me? Where did you spend most of your time during the covid19 lockdown? At home…we lived for two or three months totally in a closed space, between four walls, just like hikikomori. How did we feel about it? I think that you have in mind now all the sad memories of this difficult period. How about people who have lived like that for years? I let you see this documentary, and then we discuss this phenomenon. The documentary is filmed by a japanese public channel: the NHK WORLD JAPAN

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/4001383/

Trial of the documentary on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMKew0y_Ik

The hikikomori phenomenon mainly concerns young men aged 15 to 30 years, locked up at home for more than six months, refusing any social relationship, and spending most of their lives on the internet. The hikikomori person is someone who is like in a disaster situation as if he had lived through a tsunami, he is in his room, and the outside world no longer recognizes him, no longer accepts him.

Hikikomori people exist all over the world but are mainly located in Japan. They learn a lot on the internet in a self-taught way and also play online games. But the internet is not a cause; it is a consequence. Imagine you are locked in a room, after a while, you do not know what to do, and the internet is there all the time, so you will use it! The hikikomoris’ families isolate themself from the world just as much as their children. They feel ashamed, so they refuse social relationships, invitations and even going on vacation. Hikikomori is not recognized as a mental illness in the American Classification of Mental Illnesses, the DSM. So families are still struggling to get a diagnosis. To help hikikomoris, you have to accept them as they are, and from there, they would move to get out of confinement. Also, meeting other people living or having experienced the same thing and are now socially integrated can be a valuable aid.