Objectives: The present study had 3 main objectives 1) to examine whether the experience of job hunting influenced the state of students' mental health 2) to develop a job search stress scale, and 3) to examine the influence of job search stress on mental health in Japanese university students. Methods: The subjects were 1295 Japanese university students. From this group, 608 students with job hunting experience were given questionnaires. The results were analyzed by factor and regression analysis. The questionnaire included demographics, the state of job hunting, a 12-item General Health Questionnaire Japanese Version (Nakagawa & Daibo, 1985), and a job search stress scale developed for this study. Results: 1) Analysis by t-test revealed a significant difference in the state of mental health by the degree of job hunting experience. 2) Factor analysis of the job search stress scale produced four factors, each factor containing 4 items totaling 16 items. Each factor demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.715 to 0.870. 3) The result of regression analysis revealed that those without an informal job offer from the company of their choice showed higher job search stress and a stronger influence of job search stress on mental health compared to those who received an informal job offer. Conclusion: These results suggest a need to provide more support for university students' mental health and to improve the quality of school life during periods of job hunting.

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The purpose of this study was to discuss the problems and the possibilities of elementary school counselors in terms of the difficulties they have and ways of coping with them. The qualitative method was used in this study. We found that sometimes counselors didn't function as well as expected, even when difficult problems occurred in their school, and moreover that these difficult situations arose from various relationships. We discussed these multiple relationships on the basis of assuming the existence of specific hierarchical dimensions and providing two conceptions; "primary relationship" and "secondary relationship". We considered the possibility that elementary school counselors form important "primary relationships" not only focused on counseling or consultation with members of their school, and on the basis of these primary relationships they form "secondary relationships" which are more focused on counseling or consultation. The "primary relationship" was considered basic to cooperation both inside and outside of the school. It was suggested that the formation of multiple and hierarchical relationships were characteristic for elementary school counselors and they provided useful possibilities.

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An international version of the Students' Tendency to Lose Control Scale was developed consisting of four subscales (20 items) including; tendency to lose control with 1) friends, 2) parents, 3) self and 4) teachers. Participants were Japanese students (n=941) and students from Northern European countries (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, n=897), aged 10 to 15 years. They responded by choosing one of four choices. Scores were calculated by adding the score for each item. The result indicated that there was no significant difference between Japanese students and Nordic students in the total score. However, there were distinctive differences on the subscales. For example, the direction of anger was different between countries, such that Japanese students had a stronger tendency to lose control with their friends, whereas Nordic students were more likely to lose control with the self. Moreover, girls were more likely to lose control than boys, irrespective of nationality. Further analysis of gender-dependent developmental changes indicated that there was a period when the score rose rapidly in girls, irrespective of nationality (in Japan; 10-11 years old and in north Europe, 11-12 years old). This phenomenon could possibly be an effect of secondary sexual characteristics that cause sudden physical changes in girls.

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In this paper, the over-adaptive tendency was defined as "a tendency to try to live up to the roles and expectations of others at the expense of repressing one's own feelings". The purpose of this study was 1) to investigate the relationship between over-adaptive tendencies and depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anthropophobic tendency, and school nonattendance, and 2) to investigate the difference of types of over-adaptive tendency according to 4 mental health signs. Questionnaires were given to 420 high school students. A correlation analysis showed that depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms and anthropophobic tendencies were correlated to all factors of over-adaptation, but with a stronger correlation for depression and anthropophobic tendencies than obsessive-compulsive symptoms. School nonattendance was correlated to one part of the over-adaptation factor. ANOVA was run using subtypes of over-adaptation as the dependent variable and 4 mental health signs as the independent variable. Students with all high over-adaptive factors scores were the least mentally healthy in that most of them were beyond the cut off point. Those students with some high over-adaptive factors were in the middle, and those exhibiting a low sense of self-failure were as healthy as those having low over-adaptive factor scores. This result indicated that 1) over-adaptive tendencies in high school students can easily lead to depression and anthropophobia with a much weaker relationship to obsessive-compulsive symptoms and school nonattendance, 2) but those showing all of the over-adaptive features has low levels of mental health comparable to the clinical group, and 3) those exhibiting signs of over-adaptive behavior but with less of a sense of self-failure will be more healthy. For the future, it was suggested that the challenge is to develop practical methods to reduce over-adaptive tendencies in youth, especially the sense of self-failure and to identify the relation between subtypes of over-adaptation and particular mental problems.

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One of the main issues in studying teacher burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) Japanese version or the Japanese Burnout Scale has been the inconsistent or ambiguous factor structure found for this burnout scale. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the statistical factor structure of the Japanese Burnout Scale for elementary school teachers. A group of 540 elementary school teachers responded to questionnaires. Two models of factor structure were examined via structural equation modeling. Results showed three factors in the Japanese Burnout Scale for elementary school teachers: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment. Finally, theoretical explanations of the findings and implications for future research were discussed.

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