The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of long-term overstay experience of the ‘foreign workers’ on their stress-coping and to examine the role of the mutual-help organization from the perspective of community psychology.

Sixty-two male ‘foreign workers’ from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran who had engaged in manual labor participated semi-structured interview. Through the interview, their perceived difficulties in daily life in Japan and coping strategies with these difficulties were collected. Participant observation was also conducted at the volunteer group in order to understand the role of the mutual-help organization.

The result showed that some participants suffered from loss of sense of control over their life as a result of long-term overstay experience and showed powerlessness. The mutual help organization served to empower participants by providing opportunities for them to obtain critical understanding of the surroundings, to have strong sense of community as ‘foreign workers’, and to have meaningful social role within the group.

In recent times, the counseling sections of many community-based women’s centers are seeing an increasing number of cases involving domestic violence. Counseling victims of domestic violence requires an accurate grasp of the conditions of risk for the victim as well as the victim’s attitudes toward problem-solving. These factors present a formidable challenge to the counselor. However, the general understanding of this challenge and methodology to deal with it are inadequate.

The purpose of this study is to develop a “Crisis Assessment Model” for use in the first stage of counseling victims of domestic violence. A study of previous theories of crisis intervention and an examination of several cases contributed to the formation of three indexes for our “Crisis Assessment Model”: (a) conditions of (physical) violence, (b) the victim’s perception of and feelings toward the violence and (c) the victim’s attitudes toward problem-solving. By adapting three cases to this model, it becomes clear that each of these three indexes is categorized further into three different conditions. This study suggests that this “Crisis Assessment Model” could be an effective tool for counselors helping them to understand the crisis situation of a victim of domestic violence and provide appropriate support for self-motivated problem-solving.

The purpose of this article was to find where we are in the research on the relationships between international students’ social supports and adjustments. The studies were reviewed from 1968 through 1999 using the PsycINFO and the bibliographies of Intercultural Education Society, Japan. These studies were classified into two categories; a) studies on effects of social supports in general, b) studies on specific effects of various support sources such as host nationals, students from same nationality and teaching staff of the university. Most of the studies showed positive effects of social supports on adjustments. Thus, constructing a social support system will help international student’s adjustment. But in some studies, social support showed no effect or negative effects on adjustment. Practitioners who construct a support system for international students should carefully consider the effect of each support. In order to find out reasons for existing ineffective supports, researches should focus on how students seek help from various social support resources.

The aim of the present study is to re-examine the effects of contact experience on the attitudes of medical students toward the mentally disordered. The Attitudes toward Mental Disorder (AMD) Scale, considered to be a psychometrically sound data collection instrument, was used to assess the attitudes of 32 female and 49 male medical students who had contact experiences through their neuropsychiatric bedside training. Scores were calculated to assess negative attitudes in regards to two factors: perception and social distance. Scores on both factors significantly decreased after training showing positive attitudinal changes. Attitude scores for social distance were related to sex, anxiety state (as measured by the State-Trate Anxiety Inventory, or STAI), education, and previous contact experience. After training, male students did not show a significant change while female students did. Respondents who felt extreme anxiety before training did not show a significant change. Nor did respondents who rated themselves as having little or no understanding of a course in Neuropsychiatry given at college. Respondents with prior close contact experiences before receiving training scored significantly lower than those without such experiences. Moreover, respondents with experience benefited from contact with the mentally disordered as is evidenced by their lower scores after such contact.