num_pages: 264
description: Bethel House located in a small fishing village in northern Japan was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique community approach to psychosocial recovery Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Through its work programs communal living and close relationship between hospital and town Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul  Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives their illnesses and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative insightful ethnographic vignettes and compelling life stories her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks its promises and limitations. A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan.
language: English
title: A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan
publisher: Cornell University Press