Japanese Journal of Health and Human Ecology

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This study aims to investigate characteristics as well as relationships between the factors of the difficulties, of persons who experienced biographical disruption after sustaining cervical spinal cord injury. Authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 participants and developed the following four core categories based on the grounded theory approach : 1) difficulties of locomotor disorders, 2) difficulties in physical health management, 3) difficulties of psychological and emotional conditions as well as mood, and 4) difficulties in socioeconomic factors. Physical difficulties of the participants were attributed to not only locomotor disorders but also the constant need to manage concomitant chronic health symptoms. Moreover, the objective aspects of such physical difficulties influenced the occurrence of participant psychological and social difficulties. Finally, psychological distress derived from the stigma of persons with a disability negatively influenced the frequency of going out, whereas the loss of an occupational role related to an increase in psychological difficulty. These overlapping difficulties were related to prolonged suffering of biographical disruption. Especially, the achievement of participants' identity reconstruction might be difficult because of internalized social norms that value able-bodied persons, and important others' influence. Therefore, it was considered essential to provide long-term support for participants to cope with their psychological distress.

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This study examined the nighttime usage of air conditioners among elderlies during summer. A web-based survey was conducted from February to March in year 2011. In this paper, we analyzed the data on 751 responses from the elderly aged 65 or older, living in Tokyo's 23 wards. The three important findings were as follows : (1) The proportion of air conditioner installation for “bedrooms only for sleeping (79.3%) ” was lower than that for “bed-cum-sitting rooms (87.9%) ”. Thus, it can be proposed that elderlies do not recognize the necessity for installation of air conditioners in rooms for sleep. (2) In both cases, i. e., living in “bedrooms only for sleeping” and in “bed-cum-sitting rooms”, about 30% of elderlies did not use air conditioners during sleep. In addition, even when they did use air conditioners during sleep, 65.5% (n=399) of elderlies who had air conditioners in their bedrooms used timers and 80.2% (n=320) of them set the timer to be turned off within 3 hours. It was clarified that many elderlies sleep without the usage of air conditioners most of the time. (3) More than half of the respondents replied that the reason why they did not use air conditioners during nighttime is that they often believed that the nighttime usage was bad for their health. In order to prevent elderlies from heat-related sleep disorders or heatstroke which is sometimes fatal, it is necessity to recommend the usage of air conditioners during sleep.

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