Accurate Portrayal of a Social Phobia in a Visual Novel

[RealArab]

I am a student at Marquette University and I have been a long fan of Katawa Shoujo and this subreddit. I am minoring in Psychology here at MU and in my Abnormal Psychology class I had to write about the portrayal of a mental disorder in a novel or movie.

Coincidentally I also happened to be going through Hanako's route about 2 weeks ago.All of us here know that once you go through a route it changes your life, so I asked my professor if I could write mine based on a visual novel. He allowed me to do so, knowing I'm a good student, but told me it better be relevant. I took on the challenge wholeheartedly and analyzed the beauty of the Hanako route through the eyes of a medical professional.

While writing my paper I realized exactly how much effort the writers must have put in the work.The accuracy of the portrayal Hanako's disorder was simply stunning. Everyone here will be glad to know I received a full 25/25 on this paper and thought I would post it here for everyone to see just how scientifically accurate Katawa Shoujo is.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrJ ... nB-Rk/edit Here is the link to read it

Just so everyone here is clear, this is not some bogus fapping about the game, or some amateur opinions about Hanako. I used real DSM-IV-TR criteria while analyzing the content of Hanako's rout. I cited a follow up of the National Comorbidity Survey to show the prevalence of a social anxiety disorder among female adolescents. furthermore the etiology of Hanako's disordered is also supported by a article from the Journal of Psychological Medicine which measured childhood risk factors associated with the development of a social phobia. This is all present in my references page.

Interested to see what you guys all think

[Breaker deGodot]

Interesting point of view on the situation. It's rare, if not completely unheard of, to find a visual novel put under psychological scrutiny, so this is quite a new experience for me. I noticed one or two grammatical errors, but other than that there is not particularly much to comment upon. I still can't believe the professor allowed this!

[diosisback]

The term "social anxiety" is actually used in KS.

Lilly´s route, act 2:

"Hanako withers noticeably when exposed to the din being made around Lilly. Try as she might, I doubt she'll ever completely get over her social anxiety.".

[darkrei]

Well, that was impressive!

Thank you for sharing!



Just,a little correction:as far as I know,katawa shoujo isn't japanese,just japanese-like.

[RealArab]

The term "social anxiety" is actually used in KS.

Lilly´s route, act 2:

"Hanako withers noticeably when exposed to the din being made around Lilly. Try as she might, I doubt she'll ever completely get over her social anxiety.".

Lol never noticed that. Although I doubt that Lilly was actually referring to the disorder as defined by the DSM-IV-TR.

[MintVanilla]

Very well written. It's nice to see some professional analyzing of one the characters from KS. Do you think anything similar could be done for Rin? She has a rather curious mindset that I'd like to know more about on a realistic level.

[Sajomir]

Well, that was impressive!

Thank you for sharing!



Just,a little correction:as far as I know,katawa shoujo isn't japanese,just japanese-like.

Yeah, it's set in Japan and mimics Japanese style games, but it is an original English language game.

[Faguss]

Interesting read.

In lecture it was noted anxiety disorders had some genetic basis.

They seriously pay attention to that? I recommend checking field called Epigenetics.


...in fact there's a whole science called 'Epigenetics'. The influences that override genetics are far more important than what the genes say themselves.

“Epi” means on top of, so that the epigenetic influence is what happens environmentally to either activate or deactivate certain genes. - Gabor Mate.

[Helbereth]

Yeah, makes sense. I mean, you're really just putting a label on it, but it's pretty clear reading the story. I can attest to the accuracy having had personal experience with social anxiety. Though I was never so severe as to have panic attacks, reading Hanako's story was very familiar. The fact that it's apparently accurate enough to write a psychology paper on it isn't surprising.

[Tununias]

Nice paper. Did it convince your professor to play Katawa Shoujo too?

[mysterycycle]

Very interesting! I've only just started reading the essay, but thank you for providing it. Hopefully it'll help me write Hanako's scenes in my doujinshi...

[OtakuNinja]

Very well written

[Brisingr]

Bravo good sir! Few people have the balls to do a school assignment based off a not-entirely-educational portion of popular media. I still remember this one guy did a video presentation on the impossible physics of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" and that guy had some brass balls to show it to his entire class and physics teacher. In fact, even I made a video presentation based on popular internet memes for my mass media class during my last fall semester. You sir, have the balls to do just that and more.