Abuse for visiting scientists.

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In recent years the field of Japanese psychiatry has been troubled by dissension and occasional violence. The disruption in April 1985 of a professional congress by "anti-psychiatrists" was one in a series of confrontations going back 16 years, when radical doctors objecting to traditional forms of education and treatment seized the inpatient psychiatric ward of Tokyo University's hospital. Allegations of abuse have also been made against administrators of some mental hospitals, where over 80% of Japan's more than 300,000 psychiatric patients are involuntarily confined. Calls for governmental involvement have come from foreign experts, but there has been little interest in reform in Japan, where involuntary commitment is easily arranged and the mentally ill are stigmatized.