Mark, Felicity, Alexandra and Julius – some of the central characters of this book – are children and adolescents who refuse to leave their homes, don’t meet with peers and have renounced social relationships. We usually do not see them nor meet them during our daily routines because their lives take place entirely within the walls of their bedrooms, where they choose to eat, read and sleep. They do not ask for help, nor do they readily accept it. Their only contact with the outside world is through the internet. Yet new technologies are not the root cause of their social withdrawal. Their basic fear, the genuine threat from which they feel they must protect themselves, is the judgment of others. The authors, drawing on true stories, describe this increasingly widespread disorder (which overlaps with the hikikomori phenomenon), and focuses on the ways it reveals itself, as well as its socio-cultural features, warning signs and potential solutions.

Stefano Vicari teaches Child Neuropsychiatry at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome and heads the Childhood and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Division of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome.

Maria Pontillo is a cognitive and behavioural psychotherapist and a psychology manager at the Childhood and Adolescence Neuropsychiatry Division of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome.