Research symposium: Mental Health Matters – what are the policy priorities for Japan?

EVENT

Research symposium: Mental Health Matters – what are the policy priorities for Japan?

Date: Thursday 5 September 2024
Time: 12:00pm – 4:00pm JST
Location: National Institute of Mental Health, Tokyo, Japan

While Japan is a world-leader when it comes to longevity – scoring the highest for life span and health span on the ILC’s Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index – it places 62nd out of 153 countries for happiness. For a country that ranks highly for physical health, Japan’s happiness score indicates that mental wellbeing among its citizens is less positive. With a suicide rate of 16.8 per 100,000 people, Japan’s score is 84% higher than the global average (9.15). Compared to its Western peers, Japan spends much less on mental health too – just 2% of its health spending goes towards mental healthcare.

But we also know Japan has shown leadership on this issue at the global level. At the G7 Ise-Shima Summit in 2016, and the G20 Osaka Summit in 2019, Japan was responsible for putting mental health on the leaders’ agenda for both meetings. Thus, mental health at the G7 and G20 were both a Japanese initiative; Japan has an opportunity now in 2024 to show thought leadership, and be the first to take decisive action on mental ill-health amidst demographic change.

Resolving the challenges associated with poor mental health is crucial to ensure that Japanese people can live longer and happier lives. As part of our Mental health matters programme, ILC is undertaking a global project that aims to generate a debate among key policy and health stakeholders on how we can forge stronger policies to address and reduce the impact of acute mental health conditions across the life course.

During this research symposium, we discussed:

  • What works well when diagnosing, treating, and managing acute mental health conditions in Japan?
  • What are the challenges when delivering acute mental health care in Japan and how does this need to change?
  • How is the Japanese health system equipped to manage and prevent acute mental health disorders, and how will an ageing population affect this?

Speakers for this event included:

  • Dr Favour Omileke, Project Specialist, Health and Global Policy Institute
  • Dr Ryoma Kayano, Technical Officer, WHO Centre for Health Development
  • Dr Yoshiharu Kim, Director Emeritus, National Institute of Mental Health
  • Dr Zui Narita, Chief, Department of Behavioral Medicine, National Institute of Mental Health
  • Jun Saito, Senior Research Fellow, Japan Centre for Economic Research
  • Professor Hiroshi Kunugi, Clinical Medicine Professor and Chairman, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Teikyo University

We used this event to explore the impact that acute mental health conditions are having in Japan and the policy solutions to reduce the impact of mental ill-health in the country. This event began with a welcome lunch from 12pm to 1pm, followed by a research symposium from 1pm to 4pm.

Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) has provided financial support to ILC to conduct this event and project. ILC has retained editorial control of all written outputs.

RELATED ARTICLES