For some months, I’ve been reading a variety of books at random on mental disorders.
I read about two or three books per week. Why? Because I see so many people around me and among my patients facing this problem, which is often referred to as a “disease of our times.” It seems to be an unavoidable path of our lives today.

As I was immersed in reading about the different descriptions of one mental disorder or another, I found myself, and for that matter, many others facing the same problem in some way. In other words, apart from the differing symptoms between individual cases, some demanding hospitalization and some requiring regular visits to specialists, all are deeply connected with innate characteristics, the environment in which we live, and encounters with complex societal circumstances.

Today, I came across a book focusing on schizophrenic or integration dysfunction syndromes. Just as I went over a few pages of the book, I felt my eyes welling up with tears and found myself unable to continue to read. I closed the book. A passage in the book which referred to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” made me try to listen to the music on YouTube, but by sheer coincidence the same music came floating on the cable broadcasting.

Maybe the tears in my eyes were due to the memory of my twin-brother who died five years ago. He had been suffering from an integration dysfunction syndrome. Even before I began to study psychology, I had known for many years through my twin-brother what “integration dysfunction syndrome” meant.

Maybe it was because we were twins that I thought I well understood how and why he behaved in the way he did. Honestly, I may not have understood him correctly at all, but at least I was able to accept him and his behavior without any sense of discomfort. I saw a terrifying “purity” in whatever he did and said.

The relationships between my twin-brother and myself were of strong emotion that caused us even to laugh together. I even entertained a sense of respect to him, although it goes without saying that such terrible mental disorders are not welcome and should by all means be watched against and be prevented. I’m sure the author of the book I mentioned above does have the same feeling as mine toward the sufferers of integrate dysfunction syndromes. His words struck a chord in my heart.

Mental disorders are called by different names such as manic depression, Asperger’s syndrome and many others, but the core of the problem is that they occur simply because human beings are genuinely pure in heart and extremely advanced in mind. This makes it very likely that the cases of mental disorders will keep increasing in numbers in the future. How to cope with this serious problem is a task we have to face and overcome.