In recent years the hikikomori (social withdrawal) phenomenon described in Japan has also come to be seen in Europe, particularly France. Despite the high level of interest in hikikomori in France, it has not been clearly defined and there is no clear overall understanding of the phenomenon. Our Japanese-French research team, supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (overseas surveys), compared hikikomori youths in France and Japan from the perspectives of researchers in various fields. The aim of this study was to investigate the kinds of people to whom the concept of hikikomori is applied in France and Japan. A clinical conference was held in Paris in September 2010 to discuss cases considered to be hikikomori in the two countries. This article is an interim report from research in the first year of a series of international joint studies, and describes the commonalities and differences in the state of hikikomori in Japan and France.
本研究は4 つの研究領域①生物学的精神医学および認知行動療法の展開による疾患観の変化、②精神疾患症状の現象論的・行為論的・認知哲学的把握、③診断の歴史と科学論、④当事者、家族、支援者の視点:地域社会論と障害学からの検討を設定し、各領域の研究を通じて精神疾患概念の再検討と「精神医学の科学哲学」の展開をはかった。研究の成果は15本の論文と59回の学会等の発表・講演、国際会議Tokyo Conference on Philosophy of Psychiatryの実施などを通じて発表されている。また、本研究の集大成として、全3巻のシリーズ書籍「精神医学の哲学」(仮題)を刊行する予定である。