Healing After Disaster: Dr. Jun Shigemura on Stigma in Mental Health
The physical aftermath after natural disasters often draws public attention. But beneath the destruction, an equally critical crisis unfolds: the silent trauma of survivors and health responders. Dr. Jun Shigemura, a psychiatrist and professor with decades of experience in disaster psychology has dedicated his career to address trends in the trauma healthcare providers face in disaster recovery.
Dr. Shigemura earned his medical degree from Keio University - one of Japan’s top private institutions. Today, he serves as a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Mejiro University and he also holds a position as an adjunct professor at the Uniformed Services University, the medical school for the U.S. Department of Defense. He completed a fellowship at the Uniformed Services University a couple years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Seeing the psychological effects of the attacks in members of his community was one of the factors that sparked his interest in disaster psychiatry.
Dr. Shigemura’s research in the 2011 Great East Japan disaster, which developed from an earthquake, to a tsunami, and later, a Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, is truly astounding. Plant workers risked their lives to prevent the meltdown as hundreds of thousands of residents had to evacuate immediately. “I was the first psychiatrist to enter the restricted area of the disaster zone,” Dr. Shigemura recalled. “My role was to assess the mental health of the 2000 onsite workers.”
What he found was quite surprising: although the workers had a horrific experience witnessing an earthquake, tsunami, and a nuclear power plant explosion, the major risk factor for their PTSD was the stigma that followed. “The public was very angry about the accident. People had to project their anger to the visible enemy, which was the Electric Power Company,” Dr. Shigemura explains. “So, the workers were risking their lives in order to save other people, but they were being criticized, and that became the major key factor for their adverse mental health.”
Dr. Shigemura’s findings were later published in JAMA and some of his other work has been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Seeing how stigma and disaster response intersect in Japan, Dr. Shigemura hopes to work with the Center to expand his understanding of how they interact at the global level. We are excited to have such an accomplished researcher guide us!
