The present study examined whether cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) together with tapering of medication reduced the insomnia symptoms of 12 patients with chronic insomnia who had been on pharmacotherapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia was carried out in a series of 6 to 8 approximately 50-min sessions. Subjective sleep parameters and self-rating scales were completed by the patients at pre-treatment and post-treatment, and at a 1month follow-up. The findings showed that sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, total wake time, and sleep efficiency, as well as self-rating scales for insomnia and depression, significantly improved following the therapy. The patients reported that the effectiveness was maintained at follow-up. All of the patients tried to taper off from the medication; 4 of them became drug-free after receiving cognitive behavioral therapy for their insomnia. In total, 9 of the 12 patients showed clinical improvement after the treatment. These findings suggest the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia for patients with chronic insomnia who are refractory to pharmacotherapy.

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The present authors developed the Emotion and Activity Scale for Dementia (EASD) in order to be able to evaluate the emotions and activity of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and examined the test's reliability and validity. Seniors (123 people over 65 years of age) participated in the research; of those, 61 were people with mild Alzheimer's disease and 62 were seniors without a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (control group) . Factor analysis revealed 3 factors: "emotional confusion" "activity decline" and "memory decline" consisting of 18 items. The internal consistency of the scale was sufficiently high (a =.91 [EASD], .89 [emotional confusion], .85 [activity decline], .86 [memory decline]) . The correlation coefficient between scores on the Emotion and Activity Scale for Dementia and Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores was .70. The Emotion and Activity Scale for Dementia scores of the group with Alzheimer's disease were significantly higher than those of the control group. These findings suggest that the Emotion and Activity Scale for Dementia may be a useful scale for evaluating positive changes in persons with mild Alzheimer's disease.

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The purpose of the present study was to survey the current state of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for dental phobia by reviewing trends in treatment studies on dental phobia during the period from 2000 to 2009. A literature search identified 12 treatment studies. The major results were as follows: (a) Cognitive behavior therapy included exposure, relaxation training (or applied relaxation), cognitive restructuring, stress inoculation training, and systematic desensitization. (b) All these types of techniques have been shown to produce improvements in dental phobias in primary outcome measures from pre to post-treatment. (c) Exposure and systematic desensitization have been shown to produce large effect sizes compared to control conditions as measured at post-treatment. (d) Applied relaxation has been shown to produce a moderate or larger effect size compared to control conditions as measured at posttreatment. (e) Cognitive restructuring has been shown to produce a moderate or smaller effect size compared to control conditions as measured at post-treatment. Finally, it was recommended that future research should attempt to conduct controlled studies of treatments for dental phobia in clinical settings in Japan.

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The purpose of the present study was to examine effectiveness of behavioral group psychoeducation for parents whose adult children have withdrawn from social life, so-called "hikikomori" . In the present study, 14 parents (average age 59.1 years) were in the group receiving the intervention; 11 parents (average age 61.3 years) were in the control group. The average age of their hikikomori sons and daughters was 27.6 years in the intervention group (12 men, 2 women) , and 29.8 years in the control group (9 men, 2 women). The intervention was behavioral group psychoeducation conducted 3 times every other week; each session lasted 2 hours. Before and after the intervention, all the participants completed questionnaires so that effectiveness of the intervention could be assessed. The following questionnaires were used: (a) Hikikomori Behavior Checklist (HBCL) , (b) Negative Evaluation for Hikikomori, (c) Selfefficacy of Coping with Problem Behaviors of Individuals with Hikikomori, (d) Stress Response Scale-18 (SRS-18) , and (e) General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) . The results suggested that behavioral group psychoeducation enhanced the parents' self-efficacy and reduced their psychological maladjustment, such as "irritable-anger" (SRS-18) and "anxiety-insomnia" (GHQ28) . Based on the results of the present study, the effectiveness of behavioral group psychoeducation for parents of individuals who are social dropouts was discussed.

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