A Personal Historical Perspective on Psychiatry in Japan During the Last 4 Decades

After graduating from University of Tsukuba in 1982, I joined the Department of Psychiatry at the same university. Due to the anti-psychiatry social movement and reports of incidents involving violence against in-hospital patients at psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric associations in Japan faced questions related to ethical awareness, making it a challenging environment for conducting clinical research. For this reason, the first half of my journey─my 20 years at the University of Tsukuba─was spent conducting basic research on animal models of schizophrenia. With respect to the onset of schizophrenia, I studied dopamine and related neuropeptides in the brain, as well as abnormalities in neurotransmission in the excitatory and inhibitory amino acid neurotransmission systems. In April 2002, I was appointed as a Department Chair at Juntendo University Koshigaya Hospital. I was responsible for overseeing many medical staff, including the clinical education of practicum students and resident physicians, as well as the training of psychiatric specialists. I was also involved in the management and operation of medical services provided at the mental health clinic that had 350 outpatients per day and saw the admission and discharge of 500 patients annually. Meanwhile, I became actively involved in activities related to perinatal mental health. In 2018, I was appointed as the Director of the Japanese Society of Perinatal Mental Health and worked diligently to improve medical care related to perinatal mental health in Japan through the development of perinatal mental health guidelines.