Although the system of Long Term Care Insurance has been introduced in Japan the burden of care takers has not been lessened substantially since then. In order to lessen the stress on the part of care takers various support and assistance must be necessary. I think, therefore, this insurance is literally the Long Term Care Insurance.

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This study reviewed empirical studies regarding home caregivers for the elderly. As a result, the following points were clarified. Aging in Japan has advanced rapidly, and the number of the elderly who needs care increases. The nursing load of home caregivers is large. A lot of researches of the factor in which it influences the home caregivers nursing load have been reported. But, the research on the stress management program that the home caregivers were able to practice for oneself was not reported. The development of the stress management program that can be done for oneself including the test that the home caregivers can diagnose own stress for oneself is hoped for.

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Since Care insurance services started, there are various kinds of dwellings and facilities for the elderly. The environment of facilities for the elderly comprises the social environment, the physical environment and the operational environment. The number of elderly with dementia are increasing in long-term care facilities. The elderly with dementia are effected strongly by environment, especially caregivers, who are a part of social environment. Dynamics of adaptation between elderly with dementia and environment are mentioned by showing evaluation model of elderly environment and practice model of creating care environment.

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Present study was to investigate the effects of caregiver burden on cortisol awakening response (CAR) in dementia caregivers. The participants were 156 women caring for family member with dementia. The participants were extracted the high burden group (more than 21) or the low burden group (less than 21) by the Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview. The participants collected the saliva samples, and completed the questionnaire at their home. The saliva samples were collected four occasions: immediately, on awakening, 30 minutes after awakening, 17:00 pm, and 21:00 pm. CAR has occurred for only the low burden group, but not for the high burden group. These results indicated that the high burden group felt caregiver burden strongly, and had lapsed into the chronic stress state. These findings suggest that high intensity caregiving situations might lead to dysregulated the HPA system due to chronic stress that reflects the psychological and physical exhausted.

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In this paper, I introduce problems, methods that have developed up to now and examples of how they are used in major studies, future issues, suggestions for the use of stress indicators, and so on in the stress measurement of elderly with dementia.
For elderly with dementia, it is difficult to verbalize their subjective symptoms of stress correctly, and to use stress indicators with physical restrictions or mental discomfort. For these reason, It is considered that to measure their stress by biochemical stress indicators such as salivary cortisol and sIgA and by objective behavioral observation by more than one observers with common checklist of behavior are desirable. Simplified instruments for measuring stress are developing, and improvement of reliability of measured results is expected. Eases of stress measurement will be improved with their developments. It is considered to be the future issue that the relationship between indicators that will be used in simplified instruments and stress should be defined, and that to familiarize findings to the public.

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The aim of this study was developing the reason for selection of coping scale which measures the degree of selecting the coping for controlling/obtaining the positive things (the selection for accessing one's purpose) and for controlling/removing the negative things (the selection for avoiding negative things), and examined its reliability and validity. Six hundred sixty two workers, undergraduate students, and graduate students were asked to complete questionnaire. According to the results of analyses, the reason for selection of coping scale was consisted of two factors (the selection for accessing one's purpose and the selection for avoiding negative things) and its reliability and validity was confirmed. Finally, the importance of the reason for selection of coping scale and the limitation of this study were discussed.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among types of self-expression, interpersonal stress events, and stress responses in the first-year university students. An assertive-checklist, an interpersonal stress events scale and a stress response scale was administered to 175 first-year university students. On this basis, a cluster analysis on the scores of self-reported assertive-checklist, students were divided into 3 groups, nonassertive, assertive, and aggressive. The results of analysis of variance revealed that the assertive participants had the lowest interpersonal stress events and stress responses. On the other hand, the aggressive students had the highest interpersonal stress events and stress responses. These results suggested that type of self-expression was related to interpersonal stress events and stress responses.

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The aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between saliva cortisol concentration and balance of autonomic nervous system (sympathovagal balance) before sleep in normal male subjects. The subjects (N=27) intermittently wore an ambulatory wearable device that records heart rate variability (RR-interval) for three days during daily life. Their saliva was sampled at each night before sleep. The cortisol concentration of each sample was quantified. The sympathovagal balance was evaluated by calculating the normalized high-frequency power (HFnu) of RR-interval variability that was measured from A+5 to A minutes (A=0, 5,..., 55) before the saliva sampling time. The correlation coefficients between high values of saliva cortisol concentration and the corresponding natural logarithm of HFnu were from -0.40 to -0.49 (p=0.006-0.034) when the values of A were 10, 15, 20, and 25. This result implies that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity before sleep is significantly correlated with dominance of sympathetic nervous system activity with time lag of 10-30 minutes during relatively high stress condition.

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This study aimed to develop a scale to assess illness-related cognition in adult patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) and examine the influences of cognition on well-being. A questionnaire concerning AD-related cognition, quality of life (QOL) , and self-affirmation was answered by 197 patients (aged 16-70 years; M=33.15, SD=10.38) . Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the factor structure of Negative Cognition Scale for Atopic Dermatitis (NCS-AD) and Positive Cognition Scale for Atopic Dermatitis (PCS-AD) , both comprising three factors. Cluster analysis was conducted to reveal the subjects' cognitive patterns; consequently, the subjects could be classified into five groups. One-way ANOVA was used to find differences among the groups and it revealed the following characteristics: (1) the group with a high score in NCS-AD and a low score in PCS-AD was lower in both QOL and self-affirmation, (2) the group with a low score in NCS-AD was higher in both QOL and self-affirmation, and (3) the group with a high score in PCS-AD was lower in QOL, but higher in self-affirmation. Thus, measures that aim to reduce negative cognition and encourage positive cognition toward AD could be useful in promoting patients' well-being.

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This study attempts to analyze job stress in male researchers. We distributed the Brief Job Stress Questionnaires (BJSQ) , which was composed of stress reactions (psychological distress and physical complaints) , job stressors, and social support, to all male employees at a Japanese academic institution. We compared job stress in 145 male researchers with that of 40 male technicians and 15 male clerical workers respectively. Then, we compared job stress between 26 supervisors and 119 subordinates among male researchers. Finally, we examined the associations between stress-related factors and stress reactions among male researchers. Regarding job stressors, qualitative workload caused significantly higher stress levels in researchers than in either technicians or clerical workers. Among researchers, both qualitative workload and quantitative workload caused significantly higher stress levels for supervisors than for subordinates. Regarding stress reactions, no significant differences were found between researchers and technicians or clerical workers, or between supervisors and subordinates among researchers. In multiple regression analysis, physical complaints were most affected by qualitative workload, while psychological distresses were most affected by quantitative workload. In this study, qualitative workload was greater for researchers than for other employees, and it was the most characteristic job stressor for researchers.

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Depression plays an important role in the etiology of suicide. There are few effective screening strategy for depression with less dependence on psychological specialists, though a systematic reduction of the incidence of suicide will first require finding potentially depressive persons. We evaluated whether depressive people diagnosed by SDS questionnaire may be detected by lifestyle factors.
Five hundred-one people (male/female=247/254, age 32-78 years) were asked validated questions on depression, regular diet, alcohol consumption, current smoking status, regular physical activity, and medical history. Depression was defined based on the total score from the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and score of ≥40 points was considered to indicate depression.
Sixty-three people (male/female=29/34, 12.6%) were defined depression. The multivariate-adjusted OR of depression was 2.70 (95%CI: 1.26-5.82) for "current smoker" and 0.48 (95%CI: 0.26-0.87) for "getting enough sleep".
Persons with depression may have more risk behaviors such as smoking, poor diet, or lack of exercise than persons without depression, though it has been argued that the relationship between depression and risky lifestyle is bi-directional or high co-morbidity.

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