By SHINO YUASA
The Associated Press
See the light: A Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. conductor alerts passengers that a train's doors are closing at Gumyoji Station in Yokohama, where blue lights are installed, on Oct. 14. AP PHOTO Alarmed by a rise in people jumping to their deaths in front of trains, some railways are installing special blue lights above station platforms in the hope they will have a soothing effect and reduce suicides.
As of November, East Japan Railway Co. has put blue light-emitting diode lights in all 29 stations on the Yamanote Line, the central loop in Tokyo used by 8 million passengers each day.
There's no scientific proof the LED lights actually reduce suicides, and some experts are skeptical it will have any effect. But others say blue does have a calming effect.
"We associate the color with the sky and the sea," said Mizuki Takahashi, a therapist at the Japan Institute of Color Psychology, a private research center that was not involved in the lighting project. "It has a calming effect on agitated people, or people obsessed with one particular thing, which in this case is committing suicide."
Suicides have risen this year amid the recession and could top the record 34,427 deaths in 2003. Last year, nearly 2,000 people committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, about 6 percent of such deaths nationwide.
JR East has seen platform suicides in Tokyo surge to 68 for the year through March from 42 two years earlier.
That's causing more train delays. Conductors routinely describe the suicides over public address systems as "human accidents."
JR East has spent about ¥15 million to install the special lights on the Yamanote. The LEDs, which are brighter than standard fluorescent bulbs, bathe the platform below in an eerie blue light. They hang at the end of each platform, a spot where people are most likely to throw themselves onto the tracks, said Norimitsu Suzuki, a company spokesman.
Keihin Electric Express Railway Co., which operates in Tokyo and nearby Yokohama, installed blue lights at two stations last year after there were two suicides within a month at one of the two stations.
"We know there is no scientific proof that blue lights will help deter suicides. But if blue has a soothing effect on the mind, we want to try it to save lives," Keihin Railway spokesman Osamu Okawa said.
Shinji Hira, a professor specializing in criminal psychology at Fukuyama University in Hiroshima, speculated that blue lights could make people pause and reflect.
But he said if railways want to go further to ensure safety, they should set up fences on platforms, as several Tokyo subway stations have. The barriers have sliding doors that allow passengers access to trains only when they are stopped.
2 comments:
An interesting post but, although a tragic loss of life, this story is typical of most media reports about suicide in Japan over the last ten years in that it focus on preventing a method of suicide rather than investigating the underlying causes of why people are killing themselves in such terrible high numbers every year in Japan.
I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on some of the main reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide numbers in Japan.
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current numbers licensed psychiatrists (around 13,000), Japan Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists clinical psychologists (19,830 as of 2009), and Psychiatric Social Workers (39,108 as of 2009) must indeed be increased. In order for professional mental health counseling and psychotherapy services to be covered for depression and other mental illnesses by public health insurance it would seem advisable that positive action is taken to resume and complete the negotiations on how to achieve national licensing for clinical psychologists in Japan through the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and not just the Ministry of Education as is the current situation. These discussions were ongoing between all concerned mental health professional authorities that in the ongoing select committee and ministerial levels that were ongoing during the Koizumi administration. With the current economic recession adding even more hardship and stress in the lives its citizens, now would seem to be a prime opportunity for the responsible Japanese to take a pro-active approach to finally providing government approval for national licensing for clinical psychologists who provide mental health care counseling and psychotherapy services to the people of Japan.
Also during these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) and mirrors at stations, and now lights at stations, without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions.
Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only too clearly.
Useful telephone numbers and links for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal:
Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：
Japan: 0120-738-556
Tokyo: 3264 4343
Tokyo Counseling Services:
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
http://www.counselingjapan.com
cAn interesting post but, although a tragic loss of life, this story is typical of most media reports about suicide in Japan over the last ten years in that it focus on preventing a method of suicide rather than investigating the underlying causes of why people are killing themselves in such terrible high numbers every year in Japan.
I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on some of the main reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide numbers in Japan.
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current numbers licensed psychiatrists (around 13,000), Japan Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists clinical psychologists (19,830 as of 2009), and Psychiatric Social Workers (39,108 as of 2009) must indeed be increased. In order for professional mental health counseling and psychotherapy services to be covered for depression and other mental illnesses by public health insurance it would seem advisable that positive action is taken to resume and complete the negotiations on how to achieve national licensing for clinical psychologists in Japan through the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and not just the Ministry of Education as is the current situation. These discussions were ongoing between all concerned mental health professional authorities that in the ongoing select committee and ministerial levels that were ongoing during the Koizumi administration. With the current economic recession adding even more hardship and stress in the lives its citizens, now would seem to be a prime opportunity for the responsible Japanese to take a pro-active approach to finally providing government approval for national licensing for clinical psychologists who provide mental health care counseling and psychotherapy services to the people of Japan.
Also during these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) and mirrors at stations, and now lights at stations, without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions.
Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only too clearly.
Useful telephone numbers and links for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal:
Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：
Japan: 0120-738-556
Tokyo: 3264 4343
Tokyo Counseling Services:
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
http://www.counselingjapan.com
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