What do you think of the availability and level of English-speaking mental health professionals for foreigners in Japan?

there are hardly even mental health practitioners for the Japanese, forget about practitioners for foreigners. The good thing about being a foreigner in Japan is that chances are, we're more open to talk about our personal problems with other foreigners (assuming they're willing to lend an ear) and they can function as your support group. Of course, nothing beats professional help, but I'll take whatever help I can get. The bad thing about a very traditional culture is mental health is still seen as a myth and mental health problems are seen as a joke.

ToshihiroToday  08:59 am JST - there are hardly even mental health practitioners for the Japanese, forget about practitioners for foreigners. 

Accurate observation.

According to first hand experiences from friends and acquaintances proper professional mental health services are terribly difficult to obtain for foreigners, even when the patient is perfectly fluent in Japanese. From doctors that reduce their practice exclusively to pharmacological interventions to clinics that openly reject patients based on being somehow impossible to treat foreigners.

Fortunately for some, mental health is part of the fields that can benefit a lot from telemedicine, depending on the situation of the patient this can help with the availability.

Japanese mental health care is stuck in the 1940s. They even use drugs long since outlawed in first world countries.

The only thing that keeps me sane is exercise. If you are prone to depression or mental illness being here could act as a trigger with the staring and micro aggressions. Doctors will easily prescribe benzos. Buddhist meditation may also be helpful.

There are a variety of international organizations that offer online sessions but local ones are far too spread thin. Every few years some new ones appear as an NPO but offer limited services like 4 sessions in a season or year. Etc.

it’s pretty dire.

I believe they are like unicorns - non-existent. The concept of mental health in Japan, if it even is acknowledged, is so dated, their approaches, attitudes, practices and treatments should probably be outlawed. They do have TELL for the non-Japanese community though:

https://telljp.com/lifeline/

rare to be honest.

even for japanese speaking people.

A foreigner could ask a Japanese person to go with them. English is only one of many languages spoken by foreigners. What about the rest?

It's dire. I was lucky. I needed therapy 7 years ago. If it hadn't been for Private Medical Insurance I would have been screwed. I spent 6 months seeing a top class foreign doctor who sorted me out.

Pretty much the same as it is for English-speaking anything.

You might get lucky once in a while.

More often than not, whether at major transport hubs (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Haneda) or places looking for the tourist shekel (Ginza, Harajuku), if you get lucky, you might meet someone who doesn't get the upper-lip sweats at the prospect of speaking to one not of pure blood.

If not, and you're in dire straits and needing mental health assistance, just get ready to take whatever pills they fob you off with. Better to be zombified than causing the revered sensei to lose face.

It's probably more difficult to find Japanese-speaking mental health professionals outside of Japan.

Mental health and mental health education is SUPER important. Even knowing your problem in scientific term is just so liberating. Unfortunately it seems like Japan’s situation with both aspects is gravely bad. You may find me silly but i even can make such a conclusion simply watching dramas. And the main problem is that Japan’s culture seems to be insanely related to narcissistic patterns of relationships... but soo little ppl seem to even bother to have an interest in the issue nor to admit theres a highly functioning narcissistic pandemic in the world.

A professional should have certainty on their subject and be able to perform what their job title proclaims. A professional musician is one who has certainty on music and is capable of performing. Why do they refer to mental health quacks as professional when they clearly have no idea about the mind and are totally incapable of curing anyone? I lost two family members to these bumbling idiots.

I had a Japanese doctor prescribe drugs without informing me.

Since, I had no idea what the effects of said drugs would be,I never filled the prescription.

Since, I had no idea what the effects of said drugs would be,I never filled the prescription.

To bad there was no one else with information on what the effects of a drug would be, like say a pharmacist.

Whenever I am prescribed drugs, and I have four at the moment, I always check them out online.

i had a friend who lived in Japan before.back in 1997.

guy was working for big pricey international hotel as a chef.

young,talented,successful chef.

all get changed when he have moved to same hotel in Osaka.his world get completely broken as he did not get japanese ways of doing of things,manage things,solve problems etc.

in few weeks guy have asked me if I know someone who may help and guess what-it was very difficult find anyone.

lucky that one regular customer of one restaurant in that hotel was a doctor.general doctor but with good english abilities and knowledge of foreigners since he have lived with wife abroad for many years.

my friend went there,they spoke a lot he gets some medicine and advices how to procedd,how to reduce stress...guy get better in some 6 months than he have asked to be transferred back home in Switzerland.

as I wrote above,there is virtually non existent service even of ordinary japanese.Japanese people by their mentality and education feel shame to talk about own mental issues as are afraid of reaction of surrounding world so often these cases are ended by suicides,family problems and even more mental issues.

I took no pills - despite them being offered. Preferred to keep a clear head.

I don't live in Japan, but I visit often. And I'm not crazy so I don't worry about it.

There aren't many, but Japan is also not an English-speaking country, so that's not surprising.

It wouldn't be a problem if most foreigners who move to Japan learned Japanese, but if you've been in Japan more than three years and can't handle your own doctor's appointment yet in Japanese, that's on you for being lazy.

The majority of foreigners in Japan do not speak English.

I knew the famous Ronnie Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. He used LSD for curing mental problems.

"Laing never denied the existence of mental illness, but viewed it in a radically different light from his contemporaries. For Laing, mental illness could be a transformative episode whereby the process of undergoing mental distress was compared to a shamanic journey. The traveler could return from the journey with important insights, and may have become (in the views of Laing and his followers) a wiser and more grounded person as a result (Louis, B., 2006, Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry). "

Worth a read.