A number of studies have been conducted on the relationship be tween religion and mental health. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the concept of religious coping. There are many religious coping strategies and styles, however, few studies have focused on how religious coping processes and multiple religious coping strategies are used in connection with stress. This qualitative study examined the ways in which Japanese Protestant Christians use religion to cope with stress. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 14informants and were analysed using the grounded theory method. Three religious coping strategies (asking God, deferring to God, and accepting God's purpose) were identified, and a three-phase model of the religious coping process was developed. The results suggest that multiple religious coping strategies may be employed in the God-self relationship, thereby altering the locus of stressors.

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Positive Acceptance of Adversity Scale is an instrument designed to assess cognitive coping with adverse events that are accompanied by manageable emotions. This 7-item scale consisting of one factor was developed from 100 case records matching the definition of positive acceptance of adversity. Test-retest reliability coefficient of the scale, based on data from 47 undergraduates was. 79. The relationship between this scale and hope, optimism, psychological wellbeing, and the stress response were examined, in order to confirm the validity of the scale. Results of correlation analysis indicated that the score of the scale was modestly related to hope. Moreover, structured equation modeling indicated that the scale was positively associated with psychological wellbeing and negatively associated with the stress response. Moreover, optimism was negatively associated with the stress response. The validity of the scale is discussed.

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The structure of life goals in three groups of people: shifting-to-old (n=73, 60-64 years old), young-old (n=369, 65-74 years old), and old-old (n=50, 75 years old and over) were investigated. The results indicated that life goals had five correlated structures that were consistent across the three groups. These included, “leisure activities,” “contribution to society,” “money,” “health” and “work.” Next, the relationship between life goals and the sense of fulfillment was examined in the three groups of people. The results showed that contribution to society in the shifting-to-old group was positively related to the sense of fulfillment, whereas money was negatively related. In the young-old group, leisure activities and contribution to society were positively related to the sense of fulfillment. In the old-old group, health and leisure activities were positively related to the sense of fulfillment, whereas work was negatively related. These results suggest that the sense of fulfillment is differentially related to the life goals of the three age groups.

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This study addressed a problem that researchers are likely to encounter when employing mixed-worded scales, which are scales that contain both positively and negatively worded items. In Study 1, two versions of a self-esteem scale were developed. In the first version of the scale, the order of the 10 items remained identical to that of the published instrument (normal items). In the alternative version of the scale, the items were arranged such that positively worded items appeared earlier and negatively worded items later (grouped items). Results indicated that the scores of the grouped positively worded items were higher than those for normal items. In study 2, although professional efficacy is measured by positively worded items in common Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), this study included negatively worded items. Participants responded to 1 of 3 versions (normal items, grouped items, negatively worded items) of the MBI-GS. Results indicated that compared to normal efficacy items, negatively worded items and grouped items were more strongly related to the other two burnout components (i.e., exhaustion and cynicism); and (2) had higher total score. Moreover, (3) it was indicated that the middle response category was chosen less often.

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The relationship between abnormal eating behaviors in women and body image dissatisfaction was investigated. Female college students (n=554) participated in the study. Results indicated that women with a body mass index as low as 25.0 exhibited abnormal eating behaviors. Moreover, there was an association between body image dissatisfaction and abnormal eating behaviors. The results of path analysis indicated that “dissatisfaction with others' opinion of one's body” and “dissatisfaction with one' own face” influenced “dissatisfaction with plumpness.” In addition, “dissatisfaction with plumpness” and “dissatisfaction with others' opinion of one's body” influenced the “control of food intake” and “uncontrollable intake of excessive food.”

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Psychological wellbeing (PWB) is known to be critical for promoting mental health. However, to date, the exact features resulting in PWB have not been identified. Therefore, the effects of factors promoting PWB suggested in previous studies were compared. Workers (n=447) that were covered different types of work such as medical, industrial, and educational staff, responded to the Psychological Well-Being Scale, the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Revised, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, Stress Coping Inventory, and the Job Content Questionnaire. Result of the multiple regression analyses and path analyses indicated that positive and negative automatic thoughts that comprised positive thinking and negative thoughts about the self, as well as the decision latitude had significant effects on PWB. Therefore, it is concluded that automatic thoughts and decision latitude are critical for promoting PWB.

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The Chronic Childhood Asthma's Self-Efficacy Scale for parental long-term management (P-CASES) was developed and its reliability and validity were evaluated. A pilot version of P-CASES consisting of 24-items was tentatively constructed on the basis of past literature and children's developmental stage. Then, it was used in a questionnaire survey conducted with parents having hospitalized chronic asthmatic children (n = 179 ). An explanatory factor analysis on the pilot P-CASES revealed four factors comprised of 12 items. P-CASES also had an adequate index of fitness, and internal consistently (Cronbach's alpha .74), as well as adequate reliability. Construct validity was examined by structural equation modeling that revealed a significant relationship between P-CASES and the burden of long-term asthma management and asthmatic symptom control. These findings indicate that P-CASES is a clinically useful tool for evaluating SE for long-term parental management of chronic childhood asthmatic patients in the constant standards.

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The validity and reliability of the six-item Arm Lymphoedema Physical Discomfort Scale was investigated. A postal survey was conducted among Japanese breast cancer survivors, and the data from eligible participants (n = 148) were analysed. Results indicated that the scale had sufficient internal consistency (Cronbach' Alpha = 0.76). The factor structure of the scale was examined using confirmatory factor analysis, which indicated a one-factor model with relatively good model fit indices. Factorial invariance was examined between help-seeking and non-helpseeking groups by using a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. The results demonstrated partial factorial invariance between the groups. Latent mean differences revealed that participants who had reported severer physical discomfort were more likely to seek medical help than those who had not. Finally, convergent and divergent validities were examined using the physical domain in the WHO QOL-BREF, which indicated moderate correlations. It is concluded that the new measure has good internal consistency, factor structure, partial factorial invariance and divergent validity.

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Patterns of help-seeking intentions among junior high-school student participants (n=2383: 1245 men and 1138 women) were investigated. Participants were inquired about their intention to seek help from peers, parents, teachers, and school counselors. Then, the relationships between help-seeking intentions and scores in the Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children (DSRS), as well as the degree of participants' concerns were evaluated. Results indicated that most participants preferred to seek help from peers. Moreover, first-year students had the highest number of help-seeking intentions directed at parents, whereas third-year students had the highest number of help-seeking intentions regarding academic-career concerns, directed at peers and teachers. Results also indicated that students with more concerns had higher levels of help-seeking intentions. Furthermore, there were significant negative correlations between high levels of help-seeking intentions and “declining activity and pleasure” scores while correlations between help-seeking intentions and “depressive mood” scores in the DSRS were not significant. These findings suggest that depression has a negative effect on help-seeking intentions.

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A hypothetical model of the process by which the causal attribution of depression is mediated by stigma of mental illness was developed, and its effect on social distance was investigated. We conducted household interviews with respondents (n= 1000, aged 20-69 years, 500 men and 500 women) in 25 nationwide locations that were extracted by area sampling. A path analysis was conducted by using a structural equation modeling. Results indicated the following. (a) There were positive effects of “causal attribution to external events” on “dangerousness” , “possibility of control” and “social distance.” (b) “Causal attribution to internal characteristics” had negative effects on “dangerousness” and “possibility of control.” (c) The “dangerousness” had a positive effect on “social distance.” The implications of these findings to knowledge and understanding about mental illness and for raising public awareness are discussed.

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Defensive pessimists are considered to be adaptive because of their high academic performance. However, there are few experimental studies on this topic. Defensive pessimism (DP) in Japanese university students was investigated using the experimental procedure developed by Norem and Illingworth (1993). We investigated how DP individuals perform after experiencing failure using the learned helplessness paradigm and assessed salivary amylase activity as an empirical physiological parameter. The participants were prescreened into DP or strategic optimist (SO) groups and randomly assigned to either the d-condition, in which they had to list their thoughts about an upcoming task; or to the s-condition, in which they worked on a clerical accuracy task. After these manipulations, participants were asked to perform three arithmetic tasks, constructed such that all questions in the first and third tasks were solvable, but some questions in the second task was insolvable. An ANOVA indicated that there were no significant main effects or interactions on the performance of the first task after the manipulation. Anxiety of DP/d group was higher than in the SO/d group. These results question the validity of the DP experimental paradigm. On the third task, after the participants experimented failure, the DP group performed significantly worse than the SO group, suggesting that stress tolerance in the DP group was lower than in the SO group.

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