Support from Others as a Countermeasure to Adversity

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, February 13, 1999

A patient who had become a shut-in after being bullied and refusing to go to school jumped from a building in the middle of the night. In December last year, the Ministry of Education announced that Aichi Prefecture had the highest number of reported bullying incidents.

Bullying takes many forms—from direct violence to slander and subtle ostracism. In cases where children are bullied at school and abused by their parents at home, it is not easy for them to regain a healthy state of mind.

Dissociative identity disorder, often rooted in past trauma, is frequently depicted in films. There have been striking stories where a lady transforms into a prostitute, or a young girl disguises herself as a violent boy. In Murder in the First (1994), Kevin Bacon played a prisoner who suffered from trauma caused by abusive guards. Interestingly, in the more recent film Sleepers, he portrayed a role in which he himself inflicted trauma by raping a young boy.

Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985) also addresses sexual abuse by a parent. Whoopi Goldberg, who would later go on to play a cheerful lounge singer cheering up nuns in Sister Act, portrayed a woman who was raped by her stepfather as a child and was even forced to care for her husband’s mistress. Despite these hardships, she finds strength in the bond with her long-separated sister and continues to live. One memorable scene shows her fighting the urge to slit her abusive husband’s throat while shaving him with a razor.

While one might think bullying is an issue only in culturally underdeveloped countries, even in the UK, more than ten student suicides due to bullying are reported every year. In the UK, there is a growing belief that stress is not an individual problem, but a failure in organizational management.

Human beings are not passive entities like car tires, simply worn down over time.

The Color Purple teaches us that even in adversity, a sliver of hope or support from those around us can be the key to recovery.

A three-pronged approach is needed: removing stress, receiving support from others, and enhancing our ability to cope with stress.