SINGAPORE – After returning home with an arts degree from an overseas university in 2023, Anna’s son shut himself in his room all day and night.
More than a year on, the 27-year-old man is still unemployed and has not shown any visible effort in looking for a job. He hardly leaves the house and barely speaks to anyone, and most of his time is spent sleeping or going online.
“He went into his shell,” said Anna (not her real name), a professional in her 60s.
She does not know what ails her son, who refuses to see a psychologist or counsellor.
She was at her wit’s end until she found support from Fei Yue Community Services (FYCS), a social service agency, which recently started to counsel and provide support to parents or caregivers of socially withdrawn adults.
The agency is also trying to engage these reclusive adults.
Since December 2024, it has counselled at least eight parents, and there are plans to start a support group for the parents in May.
FYCS social worker Bryan Wong said: “They feel parental guilt, like they have failed their child in some way.
“We want to let them know they are not alone. They can learn from one another, and support one another.”
The initiative started after more than a dozen parents with reclusive children from their mid-20s to 30 years of age asked for help in recent months after learning of the agency’s work with socially withdrawn young people, said Mr Wong.
All but one of these adult children are male.
Its Hidden Youth Intervention Programme for those aged between 12 and 25 started in 2021 as a tie-up with the Reach (Response, Early Intervention and Assessment in Community Mental Health) team at the National University Hospital (NUH).
The NUH Reach team does the mental health screening and intervention work, while FYCS works with these young people to develop their social-emotional and vocational skills, said the assistant director of FYCS’ youth department Benjamin Yeo.
Mr Wong said that for the parents who called FYCS for help, their adult children had been isolating themselves for between one and seven years.
He added that the social service agency is the first to start a service dedicated to helping these socially withdrawn adults and their caregivers.
These reclusive young adults are not working nor studying, and are holed up in their rooms all day playing games or engaged in other activities online.
They would leave the house only when necessary, such as to buy food or to see the doctor, he added.
Most of them depend on their parents for financial support.
Their parents worry about how their children would support themselves when they can no longer provide for them, Mr Wong said.
Some of these reclusive adults have been diagnosed with a mental health condition such as social anxiety or depression, while others were bullied in school, had poor relationships with their peers or faced other adversities that affected their self-esteem and confidence, he said.
He added: “They withdraw (from society) to protect themselves from further hurt or shame.”
For Anna, the drastic change in her son’s behaviour came as a shock, as he used to communicate a lot more with her in the past.
They even had deep conversations about issues like the meaning of life, she added.
There were times when her son did not leave his room for a few days at a stretch – not even to join the family for meals – and Anna feared he may hurt himself.
She often wonders if she said or did anything to trigger him to retreat further into his own world.
“I have to walk on tenterhooks around him,” she said. “I don’t want to trigger him, or he may close up even more.”
She does not give her son an allowance now, though she also worries how he would survive if she can no longer support him financially.
Mr Wong has helped Anna manage her anxiety and distress over her son’s behaviour. Her son, however, still refuses to talk to Mr Wong even when he visited him at home.
She said: “I have learnt to be more patient and to give him space. I have also learnt to give my son the confidence that we are not judging him, and not force my views on how he should lead his life.
“I want to find a way to help my son lead a meaningful life, even though what is meaningful differs for different people.”
Mr Wong said it has been very challenging trying to engage these socially withdrawn adults. So far, only one out of eight adults they have approached has been willing to talk to FYCS’ staff.
Allkin Singapore, another social service agency, said that about 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the cases it sees under its Community Intervention Team (Comit) have social withdrawal symptoms.
The Comit programme provides counselling and other support for people with dementia or mental health issues, and their caregivers.
In its 2023 financial year, which ended in March 2024, the Comit team served 482 people aged between 20 and 40, said Mr Keeshan Menon, its deputy head of mental health service.
Mr Menon said the socially withdrawn adults suffer from mental health conditions such as social anxiety, depression and schizophrenia, but he pointed out that not every reclusive person is mentally ill.
He said: “They don’t feel safe outside (their house), and they fear that something bad would happen to them outside.”
In particular, Mr Menon noted that the transition from school to joining the workforce can be very difficult for some young adults, as they feel they are not making the cut, and this leads them to withdraw from society even further.
Prevalence rate unknown
Dr Patrick Lin, a senior lecturer in psychology at James Cook University, is one of the authors of an exploratory study on hikikomori among young adults in Singapore. Hikikomori is a Japanese term that refers to young people who withdraw from society and isolate themselves at home for extended periods of time.
There is very little research on hikikomori here, and the prevalence rate of such reclusive adults in Singapore is not known, he said.
His study, which involved three other researchers from FYCS and Kyoto University, polled more than 400 people in Singapore aged between 18 and 35. It was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry in 2022.
The study found that people with more risk factors for social withdrawal tendencies – such as not wanting to work, lacking social support and depression – are more likely to isolate themselves.
What Dr Lin found surprising was that the lack of family support or family relationships did not contribute to these individuals actually isolating themselves.
Most children live with their parents until they marry in Singapore, he noted, and it may be difficult to physically distance themselves from their families even though they do not feel emotionally connected to them.
Many of them may be diagnosed with psychological conditions such as agoraphobia, where they have excessive fear of certain situations such as leaving their homes, or a personality disorder. Or they could be treated for gaming addiction, he said.
A concern is that those with reclusive behaviour are more likely to be depressed – not to mention that they are also not economically active, Dr Lin said. He added: “If nothing is done to address this, they may spend the rest of their lives hiding at home.”
- Theresa Tan is senior social affairs correspondent at The Straits Times. She covers issues that affect families, youth and vulnerable groups.
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