This study aimed to systematically clarify, using a causal model, symptoms associated with menstruation in young women, and their related factors and effects on QOL. An anonymous, self-administered questionnaire was sent to female students in nursing and other disciplines of 5 universities in Kumamoto city and surrounding areas, from April to December 2012, and 1,045 responses were analyzed. Results indicated that a positive attitude toward menstruation and a healthy lifestyle contributed to relieving menstrual symptoms, whereas ineffective measures to reduce the symptoms actually increased them. Symptoms reduced QOL, which was improved by a healthy lifestyle, self-efficacy, and the use of stress coping strategies. A healthy lifestyle was directly related to symptom relief and improved QOL. Thus, a positive attitude toward menstruation, a healthy lifestyle, and the use of appropriate measures to cope with menstrual symptoms might improve the QOL of young women and relieve these symptoms; self-efficacy and support to promote the use of stress coping strategies might also be effective in this regard. In particular, a healthy lifestyle was directly related to symptom relief and improved QOL, which suggests that support is important.

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Anorexia nervosa (AN) easily becomes a chronic disease. Many studies pointed out the relationship between patients with late onset and their poor prognosis. The objective of our study was to discuss the clinical features of late onset AN and its comorbidity with physical and mental disorders. Subjects consisted of 130 AN patients who were admitted to the Department of psychosomatic medicine of Toho University Hospital as outpatients. Based on the medical records, ten items were examined: age; age at onset; duration from onset until the first visit; type of disorder; body mass index (BMI) at the first visit; BMI max-min; depression level at the first visit; and percentage and details of comorbid physical and mental disorders. These 10 factors were compared among the three groups: early onset group (below 15 years old), peak onset group (15 to 24 years old), and late onset group (25 years old and above). The late onset group had the lowest mean BMI at first visit, which was significantly lower than the peak onset group. Moreover, the late onset group had a significantly higher prevalence of comorbid physical and mental diseases compared with the peak onset group. These results suggested that the BMI and comorbidities were important factors in late onset anorexia nervosa.

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Objective: The interpersonal aversive feelings (IAF) is known to play an important role in manifesting psychosomatic diseases during adolescence. There is, however, little information on the inventory for evaluating the severity of IAF. We conducted to develop a multidimensional inventory for IAF in females. METHODS: We examined 448 female students in nursing course and proved statistically the dimensional structure of IAF using either exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis. An internal consistency was examined using a Chronbach's alpha coefficient. RESULTS: The exploratory factor analysis indicated that a new questionnaire consisted of four factors. The hypothesized four-factor model appeared to fit the data in all samples tested (root mean square error of approximation=0.062) and had good internal consistency (α=0.95). CONCLUSION: We suggest that our new questionnaire provides a clue to investigate the severity of IAF in female students of adolescence.

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This study elucidates how factors, such as lifestyle attributes, feelings after discovering their pregnancy, and family relationships of women at the time they were issued a Maternal and Child Health Handbook, affect postpartum depression. A total of 621 women responded to a questionnaire at the time of Maternal and Child Health Handbook issuance. The study used a retrospective longitudinal design to analyze the responses of 410 women who were matched after completing a subsequent postpartum questionnaire. We found that the items "presence of work," "presence of friends willing to provide advice," and "feelings of stress in life when the Maternal and Child Health Handbook was issued" were either significantly correlated with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) score, or that a correlation could be predicted even though this was not significant. The images of fathers as interfering and of mothers as caring were also associated with postpartum depression. It is said to be important to take measures from early pregnancy to prevent postpartum depression from the viewpoint of preventing abuse, and it may be helpful to ask about women's living environments and support frameworks in early pregnancy, perinatal stress, and the environment in which they were brought up, particularly their images of fatherhood and motherhood, and thereby guide them to support. Our study suggests that emphasizing these items during screening and providing support may help prevent postpartum depression and abuse in the future.

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