While health promotion had many meanings in Japanese governmental policy, its polysemy seems to result in the negative health described by Downie, and health promotion in public health seems to be put into his one-dimensional model. In the model, the elderly are to go backward to ill health at the negative end of the dimension after directional efforts for positive health become unrealistic. Downie’s two-dimensional model enables the elderly to promote their health. Nojiri, who redefined the two-dimension model, argues that the elderly should shift their direction of promotion from the functional health axis to well-being after they reach a particular age. There is a rapid increase of the old old, which leads to the emergence of people who are not independent or cannot maintain their productivity. In order to consider how to promote their health, the ninth stage of Erikson’s life cycle was examined. Erikson delineated the old old as those who are vulnerable but who are integrating their diminished and diminishing competencies and still going forward even if they can no longer reach their complete goals. They are in conflict between positive health and negative health as are health promoters.

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Smoking is one of the most crucially preventable behaviors against illness. However, social awareness was limited and the anti-smoking movement in Japan has not been a strong compared to Western countries. The real problem lies in the mechanism of nicotine dependence that smokers who are aware of the harmful effects cannot quit smoking. Smoking gives a pleasurable feeling to the smoker, which works as a reinforced behavior. For nonsmoking therapy, the approach of behavioral science is as crucial as drug therapy. For the smoker who has the intention to quit, a 5A behavioral counseling framework has therapeutic importance. In Japan, national medical insurance covers smoking cessation outpatient services. For the smoker who does not intend to quit, a 5R behavioral counseling framework focusing on motivation also has the therapeutic importance. For the non-smoker who has quit smoking recently, recurrence prevention treatment dealing with both medical and environmental factors can assist their chances to avoid a relapse. We clinicians should have the opinion that smokers have suffered from the tobacco industry and treat them accordingly. Additionally, we need to offer smokers the benefits of quitting smoking in their own way to maintain a high level of motivation for non-smoking.

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Exercise habits, smoking cessation, and healthy eating habits are very important for preventing lifestyle-related diseases including type 2 diabetes. However, it is difficult to change one’s lifestyle. Self-management plays an important role in treating type 2 diabetes, one of the most common chronic diseases in the world. Self-monitoring and other behavioral techniques are applied in diabetes treatment. Daily diet is usually monitored with a food diary in paper-and-pencil format although paper-and-pencil food diary has shortcomings such as burden of recording food items manually and difficulty in calorie calculation. In addition, it is not possible to know when meal was recorded, which is related to outcome of self-monitoring. There are some studies on food diaries with portable digital assistance (PDA), which may overcome these shortcomings. In the present article, we will overview PDA-based food diary and its possible application for self-care system for type 2 diabetes.

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Many of the victims and evacuees of the Great East Japan Earthquake, have numerous health problems in physical and mental. Examples of health problems, the emergence of symptoms of PTSD, sleep disorders, alcoholism, the onset or worsening of lifestyle-related diseases and disuse syndrome can be seen. Not only acute phase, health problems such as this are also necessary longer-term. In addition, in Fukushima prefecture, responding to health problems that are caused radiation anxiety is also an issue. For the health problems faced by victims, evacuees, to the approach in cooperation multidisciplinary becomes a team is essential, especially behavioral medicine perspective and clinical psychology perspective is required in the case of support. Then, when you think about the health promotion of the affected persons and refugees, in addition to the approach to individuals, it is also very important approach to community and region.

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Over the past half century, research on self-rated health (SRH) revealed that SRH is a strong independent predictor of mortality. However, research investigating the mechanisms of this association has not been fully developed. The aim of this report is to highlight a study that had investigated the relationship between SRH and immune indices in healthy Japanese employees (which received the 13th Araki award for the best paper in Int J Behav Med) as well as to provide a systematic review on the link between SRH and immunity searched by PubMed. Overall, 15 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Based on the current literature search, poor SRH was associated with increased inflammatory markers such as interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, C reactive protein, and total leukocyte count, as well as activated humoral immune functioning in various populations. This association was stronger among women than men, and more robust among elderly than younger population. In conclusion, in this review, immune disruption was found to be a candidate pathway for the association between poor SRH and mortality (especially by cardiovascular disorder) but the causality is inconclusive since most studies were based on cross-sectional design. Longitudinal studies are needed to provide cause-and-effect relationship to clarify the role of immune system in the linkage of SRH and mortality.

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In the present study, the authors examined, from the standpoint of cognitive-behavioral counseling, the relationships among abandonment schemas, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors of individuals with borderline personality (BP) features in abandonment situations. In Study 1, 352 university students completed self-report scales regarding the abandonment schemas, BP features and coping styles in abandonment situations. As a result, the respondents who experienced abandonment events showed significantly higher scores of the abandonment schemas and BP features than those who did not experience such events. Moreover, it was found that the lack of interpersonal skills and the absence of positive interpretations maintain and reinforce abandonment schemas. In Study 2, 9 participants with BP features participated in an experiment in which they were instructed to imagine their own experiences of abandonment. Results indicated that abandonment schemas were activated in abandonment situations, and that the activation reduced positive emotions, and increased negative interpretations and coping styles of avoiding intimate relationships with others.

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