afp
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday November 22, 2022, p. 14
Tokyo. Several universities in Japan have launched an original initiative to prevent suicide in young people: print reassuring messages on toilet paper.
Dear, you spend difficult days and you pretend that everything is fine
can be read in blue letters on these white scrolls. You don’t need to explain everything to us… but why not a little bit?
Authorities in Yamanashi, west of Tokyo, distributed 6,000 such scrolls to 12 local universities last month.
In addition to this type of message, written by a mental health specialist and appearing next to suicide prevention phone numbers, relaxing images with cats were also printed on the toilet paper.
You are alone in the bathrooms. We feel that it is in those moments that distressing ideas can appear
explained Kenichi Miyazawa, a department official.
In 2020, nearly 500 children and adolescents took their own lives in Japan, a national record and double the number in 2016, according to the Ministry of Health.
