| FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC |
| Follow-Up Film Screening: Left Handed on November 10, 2012. |
In recent years, Japan has been struggling with hundreds of thousands of young people who have retreated into their very own bedrooms. Known as “hikikomori”, they are modern-day hermits who disdain social contact and are unable to work or go to school for months or even years. Using the lens of a physician—but also careful to consider psychological, social, and cultural factors at play, Dr. Teo reviews the nature, scope, and ramifications of this epidemic of social isolation. He further considers whether hikikomori exists elsewhere in the world and what we can do to address the problem.
About the Speaker:
Alan Teo, M.D., is a psychiatrist and researcher at the University of Michigan. He is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and previously trained at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco.
