The number of malpractice suits in Japan increased by 2.3 times between 1995 and 2004. A substantial number of the malpractice suits have focused on informed consent (IC). Considering that the number of malpractice suits has continued to increase and that the focus of these suits is IC, despite the Japanese Medical Association's introduction of IC in 1990 and the addition of IC into an article of the Medical Law revision of 1997, it indicates that IC has failed to prevent malpractice suits. One factor that influences patient decision to litigate is physician trust. To study this further, we divided patients into two groups, patients who considered litigation but did not pursue it and patients who actually pursued litigation, and correlated this to their self-reports of physician trust. The study results suggested that there are 2 types of trust toward physicians, general trust and individual trust, and establishment of the latter is more important to prevent malpractice suits.

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Discrimination towards persons with disabilities (PWDs) or value in a social context to take inferior place to PWDs, is yet strong in societies . Experimental studies with particular attention to the ill effects on discrimination bearers have still outweighed revelation of the value itself. In this study, a new method to construct "social regards towards PWDs" perceived by themselves is proposed and characteristics of "social regards" hoped to be corrected are identified. Results reveals PWDs mostly recognize negative social regards as well as positive ones, and hope that negative regards are to be corrected while positive ones to be spread. The tendency of PWDs' evaluation for the positive regards strongly correlates to the degree of individual experience of discomfort than public discriminatory behavior and uneasy accessibility, that is thoroughly accumulated from how they feel in daily life.

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Since the discovery of Minamata disease (MD) in 1956, compensation systems for MD have been established for every complex situation. Applications for compensation increased drastically following the 2004 Supreme Court decision. We examined the relationship between the application process for compensation and the illness experience of MD, using data collected from methylmercury-contaminated areas. On the one hand, applications for compensation were spread among younger generations, and around low-compensated areas. On the other hand, the illness experience of those who applied for compensation in recent years was influenced by accumulated prejudice toward MD and dissatisfaction with the compensation offered. Thus, contradicting factors were identified for encouraging and constraining people from applying for compensation.

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Atopic Dermatitis (AD) has increasingly become prevalent. Multiple treatments exist for AD; and, physicians have different opinions regarding the best treatment. This multiplicity causes parents of AD children to wonder which treatment to choose for their children. According to a study done in the U.K., although the parents wished to have a shared decision making (SDM) with physicians in choosing the treatment, in reality most of them made decision all by themselves. The parents claimed this discrepancy was caused partly by the fact that physicians did not supply them with needed information regarding treatments for AD. This study analyzed whether factors other than the parents' unmet information needs exist that hamper SDM. My result suggests that the parents' repulsion for treating AD by steroids is another factor that could impede SDM. Conversely, physicians' efforts to supply needed information that are appropriate to conditions of respective AD children and stages of the disease facilitate SDM.

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This study examines the factors that affect choices of the treatment options among mothers with atopic dermatitis children, and clarifies the transitional mechanism. Three causal factors were taken up: (1) expectation of the effect of the treatment, (2) recognition of the secondary risk of the treatment, and (3) acceptance of the alternative medicine. Along with the theoretical hypotheses for these factors, I examined their empirical validity with using the interviewed case studies. Most of the hypotheses were supported by these data, and some interesting findings were shown.Due to the large difference regarding to recognition of the secondary risk of the steroid ointment, conflict has often emerged between the doctor-patient relationship.

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