As we have rolled into the twenty first century, a lot of natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, concentrated heavy rains, volcanic eruptions occurred during 2001~2015 in Japan. These disasters killed and injured many people in every year such as the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Some factors such as personal injury, economic damage, and changes of local communities have been said to be related to the distress of physical and mental health of the victims. In this report we reviewed some recent epidemiological papers about the natural disasters in Japan. We have selected open access papers which used the general mental checklists such as GHQ-12, K-6, and IES-R.

Anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis is a relatively rare disease which often demonstrates characteristic psychiatric symptoms similar to schizophrenia. Clinical improvement can be expected when both an early diagnosis and early treatment can be achieved. We herein report a possible case of anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis. The patient was a67-year-old man. He had been hospitalized due to the onset of acute enteritis. Eight weeks later, he started to demonstrate abnormal behavior, such as removing excrement out from his anus with his fingers and frequently going back and forth between the restroom and his bed. He also became delusional and feared that he might be beaten when he went outside, and that his wife was not his real wife. He showed various types of cognitive impairment and his MMSE score was 18/30. In a spinal fluid test, anti-glutamate receptor antibody was positive.According to these findings, anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis was suspected and steroid treatment was thereforestarted for him. The subsequent improvement in his psychiatric symptoms and cognitive impairment was remarkable and his MMSE score improved to 25/30. Cases of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis which develop in association with infectious diseases, including the enteritis, have been reported. As a result, when cases suddenly develop psychiatric symptoms and cognitive impairment after infection, then the possibility of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis should therefore be included in the differential diagnosis.

Lamotrigine caught marketing approval for combination therapy to refractory epileptics of whom the other antiepileptic drugs were not effective in December, 2008 and for maintenance therapy to the bipolar disorder in July, 2011. In our hospital, lamotrigine has been adopted since September, 2009. We investigated for 177 patients (male 51, female 126) who were prescribed lamotrigine from July1st, 2011 to July 31st, 2014. The mean age of the patients was 45.5. Of 177 patients, the number of the bipolar disorder was 96 (bipolarⅠ32, Ⅱ64). The discontinuation of the prescription was 80 cases. The reasons were: ineffective in 28 patients, side effects in 25 and so on, containing rash in 22 patients. Of 97 continuing cases, lamotrigine was estimated as effective in 76 cases. Lamotrigine was found to be effective for depressive state and maintenance therapy of bipolar disorder.