Maltreated children have experienced many traumatic events, unstable familial environments, or separation and/or loss in their family. Most of maltreated children have problems in emotional development as well as difficulties in cognitive development or trauma related psychopathology. For example, some of them have attachment disorder, dissociative disorders, or problems in personality development. Moreover, some of them may have attention deficit disorder, mental retardation, or autism spectrum disorder. Most of them have strong desire for secure relationships with reliable and protective adult persons. On the other hand, most of them also have feelings of mistrust toward adult persons generally. They tend to have ambivalent feeling toward adult caretakers and complicated psychopathology. Care workers, social workers, teachers, and mental health professionals involved in these children should understand their complex psychopathology and strong need for psychological cares. In psychological cares, many of maltreated children are thought to need multidimensional and multidisciplinary interventions including secure environments, longtime foster care, individual psychotherapy, special education as well as psychiatric care.

This report discusses the psychological and behavioral challenges of stress reactions and coping in children who have been abused. It examines the effects of parents’ adverse childhood experiences, such as abusive occurrences, during their childhood. Furthermore, it presents cases of abuse handled in school counseling, identifying issues in child abuse prevention efforts and care.

This article outlines the general response to child abuse by child consultation centers and support during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic based on the experiences of a child welfare officer at Sagamihara City Child Consultation Center. Child abuse is increasing in Japan. Home visits and interviews are important support methods used by child consultation centers, but are difficult to implement due to the pandemic. Moreover, from the perspective of preventing infection, rebuilding parent-child relationships is difficult given that children and their parents cannot meet. For this reason, providing support in consideration of the burden on families and children is important. Since child welfare officers are affiliated with local governments, views on methods of support differ nationwide, although the overall goal of “safety first” is shared. Our findings highlight the importance of continuously providing support that considers the best interests of children.

The purpose of the present study was to clarify the characteristics of behavior and problem solving related thinking among persons with high Sense of Coherence (SOC) through the methods of free description investigation and quantitative text analysis. Participants were 200 males and 200 females, (mean age = 49.0; SD = 18.3) living in different parts of Japan. They were administered a tool, wherein they provided answers to 10 questions about problem solving in daily life through free description. Additionally, they were also administered the SOC scale and Kessler 10. First, participants were classified into the high SOC group and low SOC group based on their score on the SOC scale and Kessler 10. Following this, the answers of free description were analyzed by co-occurrence network analysis. The results of this analysis indicated that persons with high SOC were more likely to adopt positive and strategic behaviors and thoughts for solutions after objectively understanding the problem at hand. Moreover, it was found that the characteristics of persons with high SOC persons not only reflected in the personal areas of their life such as problem solving, dealing with stressors, and emotions but also in interpersonal areas such as communication and interpersonal relationships.

The purpose of this study is to examine applicability of a statistical model for university students, which predicts both impulsivity and depression from effortful control (EC) and mindfulness.

One hundred and eighty-six university students voluntarily participated in the questionnaire survey as follows: Adult Effortful Control Scale, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 and Beck Depression Inventory.

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) confirmed the statistical model showing good fit that impulsivity was directly affected by EC without mediating mindfulness. On the other hand, that depression was not directly affected by EC, but was indirectly affected by EC with mediating mindfulness.

These results suggest that increasing EC could reduce impulsivity and increasing both EC and mindfulness could reduce depression.

Previous studies have reported that individuals with eating disorders (EDs) are more likely to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (ERS), and therefore less likely adaptive ERS than controls without EDs. However, these prior studies examined the differences in frequencies of ERS between individuals with EDs and those without EDs without controlling for depression and anxiety, which are known to be associated with symptoms of EDs and thus may influence the differences in ERS levels. Therefore, the current study investigated the differences in frequencies of using ERS (including rumination, brooding, reflection, cognitive reappraisal, and emotion suppression) between females with and without EDs, while controlling for depression and anxiety. A total of 2000 female adults (aged 20-59 years) completed a battery of online self-report measures. Analyses of covariance indicated that patients with EDs used ruminative strategies (rumination, brooding, and reflection) more frequently than females without EDs. The effect sizes of these differences were small, whereas the effect sizes regarding levels of depression and anxiety were large. In contrast, regarding cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression, no significant differences were found between the two groups. These results suggest that higher levels of ruminative thoughts patients with EDs may not be cognitive symptoms stemming from EDs as previously understood, but instead from depressive and anxiety symptomatology.