Emotional disturbance

Many Japanese involving selective mutism view that selective mutism is an "emotional disturbance."

I guess that view derives from government's policy on special education. Director-General, Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) notified "About school children and students with disabilities" in 2002. In the notification, children with selective mutism is an object of education of emotional disturbance children.

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Children who can benefit from special speech classes

1 Autistic Children, etc. who can mostly study in normal classes and partly need special guidance.

2 Children with selective mutism, etc. mainly due to psychogenic factors who can mostly study in normal classes and partly need special guidance.

(from "About school children and students with disabilities")

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The authorities included selective mutism in emotional disturbance at least 41 years ago (1967), as far as I know. In 1967 Education Ministry conducted "An investigation on school children and students' psychosomatic disorder" and defined emotional disturbance as school refusal, neurosis, selective mutism, autism, mental illness, organic brain disorder, etc.

Index of SM in Japan

Severe bullying

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Chapter 4 Selective mutism and my junior high school years

Severe bullying

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The ninth grade was one of the most important period of school life. We needed to decide our future course. Most students wished to go to high school and studied hard to pass entrance exams. I also studied hard to go to high school.

At such an important period, I was bullied by some male classmates almost every day. Fortunately, some kind female classmates helped me. But that aroused jealousy of male bullies, and their bullying got severe. One teacher told me that bullies were irritated because they had to study hard every day.

My self-esteem was damaged. I felt that I didn't deserve of going to junior high school and studying with classmates.

In addition to that, I had a problem at home. That also bothered me.

My grades were falling. My distress from bullying and family problems may have caused my academic failure. But that's no excuse.

(To be continued)

Index of SM story

I got to know selective mutism through the Internet! (Japan)

I got to know selective mutism through the Internet in my early 20s. I was surprised to read diagnosis of DSM-IV first. My childhood odd behavior meets the criteria of selective mutism very well. Until then, I hadn't known why I couldn't speak in unfamiliar settings. I had thought that I was the only strange child in the world.

But I was not an exception. I've met a lot of former or current Japanese SM sufferers or their mothers who get to know selective mutism through the Internet many years after the children present symptoms of selective mutism first.

That suggests how selective mutism is not known also in Japan. When teachers finds selectively mute children in elementary school, they don't always realize the children suffer selective mutism. So, they don't always tell the children or their parents about selective mutism. Parents, and of course, their children also don't know selective mutism. After many years, they happen to get to know selective mutism through the Internet.

Index of SM in Japan