Lawyers are an elite group of professionals who have been selected through the extremely difficult bar examination, and are promised high status and high income. As such, they have been regarded as being free from stress. There have been no academic studies on stress among lawyers in Japan and only a few in other countries. The purpose of this study was to examine stress factors for lawyers. A questionnaire survey of lawyers was conducted via the Internet, data from 140 lawyers were submitted for analysis. The questionnaire consisted of the Japanese Burnout Scale (JBS), items measuring stress factors for lawyers (job demands and job resources), and items related to personal attributes. Multiple regression analyses using the three subscales of JBS as the objective variables revealed that for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, "long working hours" and "work-life balance" were significant explanatory variables as positively related, and "anxiety about the economic conditions" and "relationship with clients" as negatively related. For reduced personal accomplishment, "relationship with clients" and " employment lawyers (Isoben)" were significant explanatory variables as negatively related.

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In the present study, a short-term program for managers that leads to the prevention of power harassment and improvement of work engagement was developed and its effectiveness was examined. The program consisted of anger management, assertion skills, active listening, power harassment education, relaxation, and mindfulness, and aimed to promote an empathic attitude from managers to subordinates and communication with respect for self and others. Three longitudinal questionnaire surveys, one management program, and a public relations magazine were distributed to 470 workers (Managers: 40, Members: 430) in a pharmaceutical company from April to October 2022. A control period and an intervention period were set for all survey participants. We examined the hypotheses that the improvement in the relationship of managers to their subordinates who attended the program to be more empathetic would reduce the damage caused by power harassment to their subordinates and improve their work engagement. The results of repeated measures analysis of variance partially supported the hypothesis. It suggested the effect of strategically deterring power harassment to increase work engagement.

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The purpose of this study was to determine how the experience of a career transition would develop career adaptability, a psychological resource for adapting to the next transition, with a focus on time consciousness. A scale for meaning making of career transitions was constructed from preliminary research, and together with existing scales, a survey of employed individuals was conducted to examine the relations among the variables. Results showed, first, that meaning making of career transitions had three factors. Second, they had positive effects on future and present consciousness and positive effects on career adaptability. Future and present consciousness also had positive effects on career adaptability. These results indicated that the meaning making of career transitions had positive effects on career adaptability both through time consciousness and directly.

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The goal of this study is to develop the “Comprehensive assertiveness scale” that follows Wolpe’s (1958) idea that considers the balance between “affectionate assertiveness” and “oppositional assertiveness,” since traditional assertiveness scales are biased toward “oppositional assertiveness”. This scale was also used to examine the characteristics of assertiveness in the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) an organization with a clear hierarchy. Items of this scale were constructed with general assertiveness items whose content was not limited to the subjects of JASDF personnel (302 members belonging to Air Base A of the JASDF). The scale was composed of two factors by factor analysis, named the “affectionate assertiveness” factor (10 items, α=.84) and the “oppositional assertiveness” factor (10 items, α=.72) respectively. The validity of the two-factor structure of this scale was confirmed by structural covariance analysis and its relationship with related scales and assertion behavior indices. Furthermore, the results of the characteristics of organizational assertiveness in JASDF using this scale showed a pattern in which the oppositional assertiveness of the executive level was not the highest, but the oppositional assertiveness of the mid-level employees was significantly higher. In addition, affectionate assertiveness tends to exhibit a complementary pattern. Thus, affectionate assertiveness and oppositional assertiveness may serve complementary functions within the JASDF.

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Over the past 20 years, Japan has actively implemented various mental health strategies, including educational and training initiatives based on self-care and line-care, as well as efforts to improve workplace environments. Research in this area has expanded, yielding substantial evidence on the effectiveness of these mental health interventions at work. The Stress Check Program, introduced in 2015, mandates that workplaces with 50 or more employees must conduct the Stress Check Program and provide opportunities for high-stress individuals to receive interviews. The program also encourages the use of group analysis results to inform workplace practices, although disparities in mental health measures persist across different workplace sizes. Despite advancements in workplace mental health interventions, applications for work-related mental health compensation continue to rise, highlighting the need for broader implementation of mental health strategies and improvements in workers’ mental health across Japan. Recent research and practice have increasingly focused on factors beyond stress, such as organizational influences and motivation, which affect mental health. This shift underscores the growing importance of applying industrial and organizational psychology research and enhancing collaboration in industrial stress studies.

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As Japan faces a super-aging society, companies are faced with the urgent task of securing workers by extending the retirement age. In addition, there are concerns that employee health problems such as overwork and mental health issues may lead to litigation risks, forcing corporate managers to pay more attention to the health of their employees. Against this backdrop, companies are focusing on a new management strategy called health management. Health management is considered as one of the management methods to improve corporate performance by investing in the resource of workers’ health. According to published research data, the factors that influence the health of workers on corporate performance and health management are more related to workplace climate and motivation, such as improvement of the workplace environment and work engagement, than to individual health status, such as improvement of health checkup results. It has also been reported that mental health problems in the workplace have a significant impact on presenteeism, and it is assumed that the demand for activities such as industrial stress countermeasures and group workplace improvement, which are areas in which psychologists excel, will increase in the future in companies that promote health management. This suggests that psychologists active in the industrial field will be increasingly important in the future.

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Clinical psychology in industry aims to provide psychological support to working individuals, helping them find meaning in their work and enabling them to continue working healthily. The activities of psychological professionals in industry need to approach both individuals and organizations, addressing not only personal consultations but also solving organizational issues and improving workplace environments. Psychological professionals in industry possess competencies in the areas of individual, organizational, and research domains. In the individual domain, competencies include assessments of individuals and consultations with related parties. In the organizational domain competencies include assessing organizational issues, intervening to improve workplace environments, and planning and implementing educational training. Collaboration with other professions and institutions is also crucial for psychological professionals in industry. Effective collaboration requires understanding the objectives, strategies, and plans of various organizational departments and understanding the perspectives of other professions. For instance, in workplace reintegration support, there are key points for collaboration at each stage. To further develop and deepen clinical psychology in industry, it will be necessary to integrate knowledge from not only industrial health and industrial stress research but also from industrial and organizational psychology.

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