Thank you all again for your support.  We now have 12,969 signatures.  The latest news is that Hasegawa-sensei and Kelly's mother Martha were co-authors on a paper that was just published in the scientific journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, which shows that Japan's rate of restraints is much worse than other countries.  We hope that it will help to urge Japanese psychiatrists to work to change their system.  Here is a description from our press release:

Wide Variation in Psychiatric Restraint Use across Pacific Rim Countries

In a study published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, an international team of researchers reports wide variation in the use of mechanical restraint in psychiatric care across four Pacific Rim countries. Mechanical restraint is the use of a device to restrict patient movement. Considered inconsistent with human rights treaties, all four countries have policies intended to minimize its use.

Using publicly available data, researchers from New Zealand (Otago University, Victoria University of Wellington), Japan (Kyorin University), the US (Children’s Mercy KC/University of Missouri-Kansas City), and Australia (University of Queensland) compared rates of mechanical restraint across their respective countries. In 2017, rates varied from 0.03 (New Zealand) to 98.9 (Japan) restraint events per million population per day, over a 3,000-fold difference. Rates in Australia (0.17) and the US (0.37) fell between these two extremes. There was also substantial variation in restraint rates within each country. No steady reduction in restraint was observed in any country during the period for which data were available (2003 at the earliest).

Mechanical restraint is controversial. Some groups consider it a form of torture; others consider it a necessary part of psychiatric care. Its use has been implicated in injury and death, including the 2017 death of New Zealand man Kelly Savage in a Japanese psychiatric hospital. Kelly’s mother, Professor Martha Savage, was a member of the research team.

The authors think variation in restraint rates across countries is unlikely to be due to differences between their patient populations. They conclude that policies designed to reduce or eliminate mechanical restraint are not working and call for urgent efforts at reporting, monitoring, and carrying out interventions to achieve the stated aim of minimizing mechanical restraint.

Paper citation:

Newton-Howes, G., Savage, M., Arnold, R., Hasegawa, T., Staggs, V., & Kisely, S. (2020). The use of mechanical restraint in Pacific Rim countries: An international epidemiological study. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 29, E190. doi:10.1017/S2045796020001031