The purpose of this symposium is to propound four main questions:

1) Absence of patient’s autonomy characterized by Japanese personality;

2) Damage from keeping medical information shut;

3) Right of self-determination;

4) Participation in medical care

In Japan, being epileptic remains a stigmatic condition. This study describes how people with epilepsy perceive how others see and deal with them, and the relationship between those perceptions and their epilepsy concealing behavior.

Data was derived from semi-structured interviews which were conducted with 21 epileptic subjects. These subjects were selected by Theoretical sampling from outpatients of hospitals, a self-help group. The data was analyzed through qualitative methodology.

The primary reason for epileptics concealment of their illness extracted from this study is a self-defensive protection from the discriminating or overprotective responses of others. Furthermore the physical aspects (e.g. seizure, taking medicine) and the social problems resulting from the epileptics conditions (e.g. losing a job) create a tension in the epileptic. Whether or not this tension is eased depends largely upon the reactions of others to the physical aspects and the social problems.

In this paper, I review B. G. Glazer and A. L. Strauss’ Awareness of Dying which is well–known as a sociological monograph applying the “Grounded Theory Approach,” and examine the process of this approach.

Based on such examination, I insist that the “Grounded Theory Approach” is a useful systematic method for defining generalizations in qualitative research.

DVP Model is the model which developed and completed the idea and Sectarian Medicine Model he presented in 1985 and 1992. The idea of DVP Model was already seen in his paper presented in 1985. In September 1992, Dr.Veatch formalized his idea into an ideal type of model called “Sectarian Medicine Model”. Three years later, in his paper, “Abandoning Informed Consent”, the Sectarian Medicine Model was expanded, and DVP model was advocated as a popular model.

In 1996, Veatch and three physicians discussed the model. Dr. Berries argued that Deep-Value-Pairing based on religions was not realistic. And Dr. Weil proposed extending the model over the clinical research.

The purpose of this article is to call attention to the methodological issues in studies on health, medical, and nursing sciences by reviewing articles on psychosocial stress and Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) from the viewpoint of the sociology of science. The following two points are primarily discussed: 1) It is very likely that findings obtained from studies in these sciences would sometimes be inconsistent due to inevitable methodological imperfections, such as sampling biases, confounding factors, and so on. Therefore, it is quite difficult to obtain definite results on these issues from a small number of studies. A sufficient number of studies on these issues will be necessary to identify the etiological relationships between socio-cultural factors and health variables. 2) Furthemore, based on a review of TABP studies, it has been suggested that even scientific research activities are not absolutely objective, as if part of human social activity. Accordingly, we are not able to gain a full understanding of sociocultural etiology unless we collect a sufficient amount of data from various studies and review them fairly, in order to reach supportable conclusions.