This study examined the association between occupational sedentary behavior (SB) and health-related parameters.We assessed 119 Japanese workers (age: 44.6±7.7 years) using by the Worker’s Living Activity-time Questionnaire(WLAQ) to determine occupational sitting time. Cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2max), blood values by health checkup within 1-year, and depression symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale; CES-D) were measured.In order to examine the associations between the amount of occupational SB and health-related risks, the participants were categorized into two groups of occupational sitting time: short group (less than 80% of working time) and long group (80% or more). In the male workers, there were significant differences between the groups for VO2max and HDL cholesterol. Among the female workers, significant differences were not observed between the groups for VO2max, but were found for HDL cholesterol. No significant association was found between occupational SB and CES-D in both male and female workers. These findings suggest that prolonged SB at work assessed by WLAQ was associated with an increased health risk, particularly for lipid metabolism in the current study. The WLAQ can be a reliable resource for future epidemiological survey and intervention research to improve occupational SB.

Mental health disorders are seen as a continuum in terms of severity, rather than as existence of distinct syndromes.These symptoms of mental health problems that fall short of diagnostic criteria are prevalent, causing significant societal functional impairment. These symptoms, termed “sub-threshold”, lead to substantial social and economic burden across the entire population. It has been demonstrated that these symptoms may be managed with self-help strategies. However, it has been unclear which self-help strategies are likely to be helpful and feasible for people who suffer from such sub-threshold symptoms. In this paper, after defining preventive intervention for mental health disability, the following topics for self-help strategies are reviewed from the limited number of studies: 1) target population, 2) the role of self-help strategies in the prevention of mental health problems, 3) contents of self-help strategies (usefulness and feasibility, interventions with the purpose of prevention and management), and 4) mental health promotion associated with self-help strategies (theoretical background, dissemination and awareness-raising).Finally, after identifying a list of effective self-help strategies, the utilization of self-help strategies for the prevention of mental health disability and a wide range of applications are discussed.

The Osaka Occupational Health Promotion Center provides information regarding the “Guide of Mental Health Professionals for Workers in Osaka,”, which gives psychiatric specialists in Osaka support for mental health promotion at work and return-to-work programs. The present study sought to reveal factors influencing mental health promotion at work associated with utilization of the guide. We sent 1,249 companies in Osaka a survey about their experience of utilizing the guide, and 369 responded. We contacted 336 companies that had never used the guide, and 214 returned the survey (response rate = 63.9%), while 208 companies that completed the survey regarding their trial use were analyzed. The results revealed that 113 companies used the guide, while 95 did not. Public health nursing, cooperation with managers, training and seminars at work, cooperation with family, and occupational care for return-to-work were associated with increased utilization of the guide. Specifically, public health nursing was associated with an increase in utilization (OR = 2.34, 95% CI: 1.02–5.39), and less cooperation with managers was associated with reduced utilization (OR = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.07–0.65). These results suggest that the Occupational Health Promotion Center should target public health nurses to provide information for promoting mental health at work.

The aims of this study were to examine the effect of frequency contents on discomfort of standing persons exposed to fore-aft, lateral and vertical whole-body vibration (WBV). Twelve male subjects were exposed to totally 81 stimuli that comprised three types of frequency contents with three acceleration magnitudes (0.2, 0.4, and 0.8 m/s² r.m.s.) along fore-aft (x), lateral (y) or vertical (z) direction. The subjects with standing posture on the platform of the vibra tion test rig rated the subjective discomfort for each stimulus. The presentation order of test stimuli was randomized and each stimulus was repeated three times. The subjective scale for discomfort was calculated by using the category judgment method. In the fore-aft and lateral direction, most of the lower limits of the categories for low frequency and high frequency-weighted vibration stimuli significantly resulted in higher vibration acceleration magnitudes than those for constant power spectrum vibration stimuli. In contrast, in the vertical direction, difference of frequency contents did not significantly affect the subjective response. Also the lower limits of all the categories in the fore-aft and lateral direction were higher than those in the vertical direction. The results suggest that the effect of emphasized low or high frequency contents appears in tolerant perception of discomfort to WBV in the fore-aft and lateral direction. Standing people respond more sensitively to WBV regardless of vibration frequency contents in the vertical direction than in the fore-aft and lateral direction.

For safety and health management in the workplace, workers’ active participation is essential. The participation is promoted by workers’ perception, their sense of value, motivation, response toward safety measures, and so on. And the knowledge of the influential factors can be shared across all industry sectors.

This study collected previous studies on workers’ safety perceptions and analyse them to obtain influential factors. The analysis and categorization resulted in four influential factors: people and organization around the worker, system/safety programme/rules, work environment, workers’ characters and their circumstances. The extent of which the influential factors function for workers is variable depending on organizations, industrial sectors, and research methods they adopt, but these factors are considered to be helpful to design approaches to motivate workers to work safely.

For prevention of occupational accidents, the Labor Standards Inspection Offices evaluated the severity of the accidents based on the expected length of sick leave which was reported to the offices. Workers who met the accidents often take longer periods of sick leave than expected. We examined the excess of the length and their associations with the workers’ characteristics. The subjects were 1,672 workers (1,204 men and 468 women) who met occupational accidents. 71.2% of the men and 63.9% of the women took longer periods of sick leave than expected. Men had longer expected (median: 30 days for men, 28 days for women) and actual length of sick leave (median: 50 days for men, 39 days for women) than women. The median rates of the actual sick leave periods to the expected ones were 1.38 for the men and 1.20 for the women. In men, working for the transportation/port industry, a company size of 100-299 employees, and an age of less than 30, were significantly associated with taking longer periods of sick leave than expected. The severity of occupational accidents may be underestimated if it is estimated by the expected sick leave length.