Thanks again for your support. We now have over 7800 signatures! As we mentioned last time, we will continue accepting signatures until the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare makes concrete changes. While they haven’t made changes, at least there has been more publicity. It seems that Japanese psychiatric hospitals have multiple problems. An excellent documentary by NHK World on the problem of Japanese hospitals keeping people confined for long periods was broadcast on June 30. It is called “I Was a Caged Bird: Psychiatric Hospitalization in Japan”. It was just made available as “video on demand”, but it will only be available until 15 July, so please watch it soon. It is narrated in English and has English subtitles when people speak Japanese. The link is attached. It follows one man who was released after 39 years only because the Fukushima disaster made the hospital he was in uninhabitable. Now he is perfectly fine and living on his own. They note that currently there are 180,000 patients who have been in psychiatric hospitals for more than 1 year, and 100,000 for more than 5 years,