Industrial physicians who lack knowledge about developmental disorders cannot organize stories of both patients and their employers. This situation cause difficulties of taking countermeasures to the disorders. Therefore every industrial physician needs knowledge about developmental disorders.

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Developmental Disorder includes, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disorders listed in DSM-IV-TR. Moreover, Intellectual Disabilities are thought to be included in this criteria. Although Developmental Disorder was classified into a big category of “Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence” in DSM-IV-TR, it is classified into a big category of “Neurodevelopmental Disorders” due to DSM-5 in May, 2013. In this article, we explain the outline of the “Neurodevelopmental Disorders”, and the clinical characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and other disorders due to DSM-5.

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Many individuals with developmental disorders, especially autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, cannot adjust themselves to their daily living environment (e.g., home, school, or work). This is a result of their poor social skills and the inappropriate stimuli they receive (e.g., bullying by classmates, severe rebuke from parents or teachers), which are based on an improper understanding of their condition and its features. Their stressful environments may result in secondary disabilities such as depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders (e.g., adjustment disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, reactive attachment disorder, or disinhibited social engagement disorder). In individuals with mild features of developmental disorders, these symptoms are often overlooked in childhood, and are pointed out to them only in adulthood, when secondary disabilities are already fixed. To enable early detection and to support individuals with developmental disorders, efforts should be made to impart a proper understanding of these disabilities to the general population.

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According to the author’s clinical experiences, patients with developmental disorder, especially autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often develop PTSD-like symptoms following relatively mild stress events such as scolding from parents or teaches, quarrels with others. Another characteristic of the PTSD-like psychopathology in ASD seems to be that very unexpected and accidental details remind the patients of the traumatic event. The relationship between learning disorder and trauma was also discussed.

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The paper reviewed studies in this country and abroad and discussed following issues: social adaptation in adolescents and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), stress or psychological burden which the family members bear, supports the family members can be provided, problems in adaptive behaviors and mental health which adolescents/adults with ASD exhibit. Furthermore, we addressed what kinds of supports have to be offered to adolescents/adults with ASD and the family members in this country: As adolescent a/adults with ASD and their family show vulnerability to stress, it is suggested that appropriate supports be provided for adolescents/adults with ASD (e.g. cognitive behavior therapy) as well as for the family (e.g. parent training). Therefore, we have to establish psychosocial support systems which can be provided for this vulnerable population everywhere in the country.

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In recent years, in all life stages, it has been accumulated interest in “developmental disorders”, and appropriate continuous support has been recommended from an early stage. Nine regional habilitation centers in Yokohama were established based on an original measure of Yokohama City. We surveyed those who consulted the centers last year. Out of 4,509 people who consulted the centers, 3,664 people (81.3%) were preschoolers, and young children aged 2 to 5 years accounted for about 60%. 40% of them were introduced from regional health and welfare centers. 2,547 people were diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder, and accounted for 58.7%. Targeting the parents who participated in the early intervention group, which started in August last year, we have examined the support for the parents who suffer from stress in the recipient of child care difficulties and accepting developmental disorders. It is important to enhance the provision of consultation and information for understanding the characteristics of the disorder in children. Furthermore, to evaluate the mental health of the individual family members, it is necessary to continue to support with a generalization and flexibility.

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Support for the workers with Developmental Disorders is one of the important issues in occupational mental health. Major symptoms such as deficits in social reciprocity, deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, and deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, which are common in Developmental Disorders, strongly affect work performance. Some workers with Developmental Disorders suffer from other psychiatric conditions because of maladjustment to the work environment, while the manifestation of Developmental Disorders in workers is also influenced by the work environment. Occupational health staff should have sufficient of understanding of the difficulties and psychological suffering of such workers to be able to support their health and continuous employment. Support for mild cases as well as severe cases is sometimes difficult because it may give the impression of unfairness or cause a degeneration of morale among co-workers. It is necessary to have detailed discussions about the future development of support systems for workers with Developmental Disorders.

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This paper consists of the following three aspects. First, it describes the author’s personal understanding of the developmental disorders. In clinical situations, we call the condition where congenital characteristics of developmental disorders and relational difficulties manifested in daily life overlap. The author calls it “developmental disorders plus”. Next, the paper captures the concept of “earnest living” as a continuous image of someone tirelessly, often patiently, and vibrantly lives today, by just believing in tomorrow. Based on these ideas, it discusses the developmental disorder from the viewpoints of “reason of life” and “precious existence (seen by other people)”. Finally, the paper examines the patients’ supporters as someone who “earnestly protect” the ones who “earnestly live” from relational difficulties.

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The present study investigated the effects of a stress management program by the cognitive therapy for human service provider. The program consisted of the lecture and exercise which divided the cognitive therapy into six steps, and was carried out for 3 hours. After the program, statistically significant differences were found between pre and post program on the scores of STAI-S score, “understanding of the cognitive model” score, “self-efficacy in the awareness of their own feelings” score, “self-efficacy in the awareness of their negative thought ” score, “self-efficacy of looking back upon a thought, when it falls into an unpleasant feeling” score, and “self-efficacy over creation of positive thought” score. These suggest that this program improved stress responses, and human service provider might perform the cognitive therapy by themselves.

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To shed light on cognitive appraisal in children, a scale was developed in Study I and used in Study II to investigate the relationships between cognitive appraisal and coping strategies, with an ultimate goal of informing interventions to promote healthy coping. In Study I, with a sample of 74 universal students and 132 children (67 boys and 65 girls) a 16-item, 4-factor measure of cognitive appraisal in children was developed and confirmed to have satisfactory reliability and validity. Its factor structure was rechecked in Study II, which also found that “commitment” is strongly associated with aggressive coping and “threat” is strongly associated with avoidant coping, in a sample of 1,158 children (596 boys and 562 girls). These results also indicate that interventions that modify cognitive appraisal or teach coping strategies are effective for reducing psychological stress in children.

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Drive for thinness in adolescents is associated with sense of merit or demerit about current own body shape and social comparison with body shape of his/her family members, resulting in future risk of eating disorder. The present study investigated the sexual difference and developmental change on drive for thinness and the model to account for drive for thinness. Male and female undergraduates (n = 243) and senior high school students (n = 221) completed a questionnaire consisting of ‘scale of drive for thinness’, ‘merit or demerit about own body inventory’, ‘social comparison with body shape of his/her family members and ‘the degree of obesity of his/her family members’. The results showed that females and undergraduates had significantly stronger drive for thinness than males and high school students respectively. By covariance structure analysis, sense of merit about current own body shape showed a strong influence on drive for thinness among all groups, on the other hand social comparison with body shape of his/her family and the cognitive appraisal of obesity of his/her family members showed weak influence among all groups. These results suggest that cognitive appraisal of own body shape is an important variable that affect drive for thinness, Further empirical research should be needed.

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This study examined the effects of interaction with others in vacation on subjective happiness and depression. Employees have been experiencing substantial changes in working conditions, and such changes cause an increase of stress. In such a background, the number of people with mental health disorder is rising, and it becomes a major problem in these days. Previous studies have indicated that vacation greatly influences on individual subjective happiness and stress state. However, the number and area of participants in previous studies were limited. Therefore, we conducted an Internet survey and collected participants of various ages from different areas in Japan. The total of 275 adults (109 women, 166 men) participated in this study. As a result of the analysis, the interaction with others in vacation was positively associated with subjective happiness, whereas subjective happiness was negatively associated with depression symptoms as a reaction to stress. These results suggest that reconsidering about vacation have a possibility to promote individuals’ mental health.

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This study investigates the relationship between self-disclosure and characteristics of friendship. Depth of self-disclosure was categorized into four levels and characteristics included degree of familiarity, subjective similarity, sense of trust, and favorableness. The results suggest that (1) the amount of all levels of self-disclosure to close friends was greater than that to other friends; and (2) when subjective similarity or sense of trust or favorableness is high, the amount of all levels of self-disclosure is high. The results suggest that it is possible to study subjective similarity and favorableness as a manipulated variable to understand what factors promote self-disclosure.

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Objective: The present study revealed association of having mentor with mentee job satisfaction and work life conflict among working women. Methods: A web-based survey was administered to 1,202 female managers and staff within large corporations; 757 responses (63.0%) were obtained, and 698 responses (58.1%) with full data were analyzed. Analysis of covariance was used to compare the mean score of job satisfaction and work-life conflict among mentees with informal mentor, formal mentor, informal and formal mentor, and non-mentees. Results: 48.1% of the study subjects hold mentors. Mentees with only informal mentors showed greater job satisfaction and lower work-life conflict than non-mentees, however, no significant differences emerged not only between mentees with only formal mentors and non-mentees but also between mentees with only informal mentors and only formal mentors. Conclusions: Results suggested effectiveness of having informal mentor for improving job satisfaction as well as decreasing work-life conflict of working women. The effectiveness of formal mentor needs to be examined with larger sample.

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The purpose of this study was to examine job stress and mental health among high-skilled foreign workers (HFWs) in Japanese workplace. Questionnaire including items about job stressors (9 factors), social supports (supervisor, co-worker, family/friends) and satisfaction (work, family) and stress reactions (anxiety, depression, psychosomatic symptoms) was administered to 274 workers mainly living in Tokyo (126 HFWs and 150 Japanese workers). ‘Quantitative overload’ and ‘workplace environment’ caused significantly lower levels of job stress, while ‘qualitative overload’ and ‘interpersonal relationships’ produced significantly higher levels of job stress among HFWs than Japanese workers. Interestingly, not only 2 job stress factors (‘job fitness’, ‘rewarding job’) and ‘job satisfaction’ but also 2 stress reactions (‘depression’ and ‘psychosomatic symptoms’) were higher among HFWs than Japanese workers. ‘Interpersonal relationships’ which is the major stressor among Japanese workers was not correlated with either of the stress reaction factors, while ‘qualitative overload’ was correlated with ‘anxiety’ only. This study suggests possibility that HFWs’ job stress is associated with difference of cognitive appraisal between HFWs and Japanese workers or of cross-cultural contexts embedded in workplace.

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Interpersonal relationships are one of the most important factors that make students resilient to stressors. In the present study, we focused on social capital as an amount of available resources derived from human relationships. We examined two aspects of social capital, namely network size and subjective social capital, to determine which of the aspects is more predictive of depressive symptoms and subjective well-being. We collected data from 1,772 undergraduate students across 38 universities. Correlational analysis showed that network size was significantly associated with depressive symptoms and subjective well-being. However, the results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that subjective social capital significantly predicted depressive symptoms and subjective well-being even after controlling for network size. These findings suggest that subjective social capital in university life is an important factor for student’s psychological adjustment and well-being.

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Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a collective term describing malignancy located around the oral, larynx, pharynx, and maxillofacial areas. Most HNC patients suffer from dysfunction associated with breathing, eating, and communicating and get a lot of stress. However previous psychological interventions have little or no effect on stress relief according to a recently-published meta-analysis. This paper presents a case report of a patient with terminal tongue cancer, which frustrated by uncontrolled pain and his own inability of swallowing. Psychologist reinforced his support-seeking skill and distraction indirectly through a ward nursing staff and a palliative care nurse. For the last time, the patient could get enough support from both his family and medical staff, and his psychological state gradually became stable. This report suggested that behavioral consultation focused on the acquisition of stress coping skill effects on reduced psychological distress for patients with HNC.

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This study examined the effect of educational intervention on ability of self-control. Ten participants in a correspondence upper secondary school took a class about ability of self-control and were asked to engage self-control training that they straighten themselves up for two months. Before and after the training, the participants were asked to indicate intentions of eight types of self-control behaviors. Result indicated that post rating of self-control intention was higher than pre rating of it. Moreover, there found positive correlation between amount of training and increase of self-control intention. These results suggest a possibility that longitudinal training of self-control may be effective in increase of the intentions of self-control behaviors.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a 20-minute cutting-art task on depressive and anxious mood and on the level of self-focused attention in highly ruminative people. Participants were randomly assigned to three distractive task conditions that required attention—cutting-art, calculation, and silent reading—and engaged in each task after induced rumination. The results indicated that the level of self-focused attention reduced in all conditions after distractive tasks and showed no difference between tasks. Similarly, negative moods were reduced in all conditions and no difference was found between tasks. The paper concludes by discussing the characteristics of the state of attention generated during the cutting-art task.

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This study investigated the association between contingencies of self-worth (CSW) and workers’ mental health. CSW is a concept to capture individual differences in the domains in which a person has staked his or her self-esteem. Specifically we examined two types of CSW, namely, autonomy in work (autonomy contingency: AC) and feeling superior to others (superiority contingency: SC). We predicted that AC would positively associate with perceived value of job contents, which in turn would be linked with increased subjective well-being (SWB) as well as decreased psychological distress, while SC would not associated with perceived value of job contents. We conducted an online survey study with full-time employees in Japan (N = 450). As predicted, AC was associated with greater perceived value of the job contents, which in turn was linked with increased SWB and decreased psychological distress. On the other hand, SC was not associated with perceived value of job contents, but was directly linked to increased psychological distress.

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Many people suffer from undue psychological stress in modern society. We here examined whether emotional tears relieve stress and improve mood state. Fourteen healthy students were subjected to a mental arithmetic task, and were subsequently induced to shed tears by viewing emotional movie scenes or cutting onions. A resting state following the task was also used as a control. The mood states were assessed with the Profile of Mood States (POMS). Heart rate variability, especially the ratio between low and high frequency components (LF/HF ratio), was measured to evaluate levels of psychological stress. Fatigue levels of POMS and LF/HF ratio were decreased after shedding tears by viewing emotional movie scenes. In contrast, tears caused by onions, as well as resting state, resulted in little or no reduction in either fatigue levels or LF/HF ratio. These findings demonstrate that emotional tears play an important role in relieving psychological stress and reducing mental fatigue.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a stress-related growth scale for athletes. The subjects were 627 Japanese athletes (male = 274, female = 353, mean age = 34.98, SD = 7.95). They were asked to answer a set of questionnaires including a face sheet and Stress-Related Growth Scale for Athletes (SRGSA) which was developed in this study. The result of exploratory factor analysis revealed a 3-factor solution with 15 items of the SRGSA. Each of the factors demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha reliability values ranging from 0.812 to 0.913. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the structural validity of the SRGSA showed acceptable fit indices (GFI = 0.950, AGIF = 0.927, CFI = 0.971, RMSEA = 0.057). These results suggested that the reliability and the validity of the SRGSA as a scale for assessing athletes’ stress-related growth was statistically satisfied. In future research, an investigation for athletic club members and junior athletes should be considered in order to confirm the structure of SRGSA.

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The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a death-educational program based on an existential approach for improving time and existential attitudes. 15 undergraduate students were assigned to the program. The intervention was composed of one 90 min. session and 3 exercises. All participants saw some parts of a movie where a mother suffers from her son’s leukemia. Afterwards, they discussed the reasons the mother’s suffering is went away. They completed questionnaires measuring time and existential attitudes before and after the program. The results indicated that the group had improved time and existential attitudes. In addition, it was discussed how they changed in the program.

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It is known that Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) has high prevalence among Anxiety Disorders. In previous studies, it was suggested the attentional control, anxiety sensitivity, and depression symptoms were considered to be a maintaining and aggravating factors of anxiety disorders, including SAD. In present study, we investigated the effects of each factor on SAD symptoms. Multi regression analysis by stepwise method showed that these factors have significant effects on SAD symptoms (attention control; β = .24, p < .01; depression symptoms; β = .22, p < .01; anxiety sensitivity; β = .20, p < .01, respectively). Present results indicated that attentional control, anxiety sensitivity, and depression symptoms may have the influence of the reinforcement of SAD symptoms. Future studies, it was required to examine the difference between SAD and other anxiety disorders. Finally, the future direction of the cognitive behavior therapy on attentional control, anxiety sensitivity, and depression symptoms in SAD treatment was discussed.

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This study examined whether attitudes towards ambiguity and interpersonal stress events in a diathesis-stress model predicted changes in depression. Sixty-seven female college students were asked to answer the Attitudes Towards Ambiguity Scale (ATAS), and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). After one month, they were asked to complete the Scale of Interpersonal Stressor (SIS), and SDS. We measured SDS twice in order to investigate residual change of depression. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the interaction term of negative attitudes toward ambiguity and interpersonal friction significantly predicted changes in depression. Simple slope analysis showed that participants who did not have negative attitudes toward ambiguity and experienced a higher degree of interpersonal friction showed significantly lower reductions in depression scores than those who experienced a lower degree of interpersonal friction. But the other interaction terms were not significant. These results suggest that the diathesis-stress model was not supported and that attitudes towards ambiguity were not sufficient to consider as a diathesis for depression.

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