The phenomenon of voluntary social withdrawal has now assumed alarming dimensions in our country, and a new study promoted by the Benevento Local Health Authority and carried out by the IPRS confirms this. Even the estimate that the national association Hikikomori Italia Ets has been communicating for years, that there would be at least 200 thousand cases of self-isolation on the peninsula, finds further confirmation in the data collected. However, there is one number that is most striking of all: according to the study, women in retreat are even three times more numerous than men. A result that openly clashes with the entire international literature.

In Japan, where the phenomenon has exceeded one and a half million people, it is in fact mainly men who are affected. And even in Italy the available data points in the same direction: a recent survey by the Hikikomori Italia Genitori Ets association, conducted on almost five hundred families, shows that over 80% of cases of social withdrawal concern males.

Identikit of discomfort among young people

How can we explain this very marked difference? At the time of writing, the IPRS research has not yet been published, but only presented during a conference; I therefore have no way of studying it in depth. Yet, again according to what was reported by ANSA, “the most serious cases that emerged from the study are characterized by almost total isolation, difficulty going to school, inversion of the sleep-wake rhythm, depressive and self-harming thoughts, use of the internet as a substitute for real life, strong social anxiety and phobias related to leaving the house or contact with others”. This description leads me to hypothesize that the study, like much of the research conducted so far on the hikikomori phenomenon in Italy, is not investigating severe social withdrawal, but rather moderate social withdrawal.

In fact, those who suffer from severe social withdrawal often cannot even attend school and struggle to interact even with their parents. Again according to the report published by Hikikomori Italia Genitori, over 60% of socially withdrawn people do not go to school or work, therefore finding themselves in that condition defined as NEET, with the addition, however, in the case of hikikomori, of an almost total absence of direct social interactions outside the home.

The weight of social expectations

Therefore, stating that “hikikomori are mainly women”, at present, is information that is at least unfounded, if not downright misleading. In fact, men seem to be more affected by social withdrawal, also due to a male role model still strongly based on performance and the construct of virility. This leads them to feel more ashamed of showing their fragility and, consequently, discourages them from asking for help. On the contrary, women in retreat seem on average to be more able to recognize and communicate their suffering, appearing less repellent both to attempts at support from their parents and those from healthcare professionals. This means that their withdrawal tends to be less extreme than that of men and, above all, it maintains a greater possibility of evolving positively. The media should therefore pay more attention to how they report study data, because the risk is that of constructing misleading narratives which, once consolidated in common sense, become much more difficult to undermine.