Photo/Illutration The younger sister character will be used in the anime therapy clinical test. (Provided by Dai Nippon Printing Co.)

A fantasy-inspired clinical project has started to determine if psychiatrists posing as anime characters can improve treatment of depression among young people.

Yokohama City University and Dai Nippon Printing Co. are handling the joint project.

Anime therapy is the brainchild of Francesco Panto, an Italian who practices psychiatry in Japan and says that he himself was saved by anime.

He said Japanese anime depicts the inner struggles and suffering of people in a realistic manner, making it an effective tool to improve mental problems and change one’s personality regarding how things are viewed.

About 20 people between 18 and 29 will be involved in the clinical testing.

Certified psychiatrists or clinical psychologists in the project will first take a training session and then take on the character of one of six anime types.

While costumed, they will converse with the test subjects using a voice changer.

Panto came up with the six characters—an older sister, a younger sister, a mother, a prince, a younger brother and a handsome uncle.

The characters all have their own struggles and problems.

After choosing the character to be their counselor, the test subjects, as themselves, will engage in two 60-minute online sessions a week for 4 weeks.

The research team will study the safety and feasibility of character counseling. Various data will be collected, including changes in numerical scores related to depression, satisfaction with the counseling sessions, the level of trust developed with the counselor as well as heartbeat and sleep patterns during the test period.

The team is seeking to eventually spread the use of such counseling as a social prescription to improve quality of life.

Younger people tend to have more psychological problems. One report indicated that about 75 percent of those under 25 suffer from some such problem.

Suicide is the leading cause of death in Japan among teens and those in their 20s. Japan has the highest death rate from suicide among the Group of Seven nations.

A Cabinet Office study found that 43 percent of Japanese in their 20s felt alienated.

“Many young people in their teens and 20s have mental problems, but they have extremely few options for easily accessing services that are medically appropriate,” said Mio Ishii, an assistant professor of psychiatry at YCU who heads the project. “There is a need to develop services that young people can use when they feel slight mental problems.”

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