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The article focuses on a controlled clinical trial conducted on the workers of an information technology company regarding one hour sleep hygiene education after which the impact of the experiment was investigated. It presents contents of this program which include review of sleep habits, sleep hygiene education and the establishment of sleep habit goals. It suggests providing sleep hygiene education to workers in a wide range of occupations including shift workers.

Background: Maternity blues and postpartum depression are common complications of childbearing. However, few studies have shown the relationship between the severity of maternity blues and the risk of postnatal depression. We carried out a longitudinal study among Japanese women to show that maternity blues is a useful factor for predicting postpartum depression.Methods: Two hundred and thirty-five women completed questionnaires before delivery, and five days, one month, and three months after delivery. They were required to answer the Stein's Blues Scale and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and other variables. A sequential logistic regression analysis was performed to estimate the association of maternity blues with postpartum depression. The stratum-specific likelihood ratio was then calculated.Results: The prevalence of postpartum depression was 12.8%. A Stein's Blues Scale of eight or above was significantly associated with postnatal depression. Likelihood ratios (95% CI ) for the Stein's Blues Scale of 0 to 3, 4 to 7, 8 to 11 and 12 or more were 0.33 (0.16-0.65), 1.06 (0.60-1.88), 3.42 (1.64-7.12) and 9.57 (3.41-26.86), respectively.Conclusions: These findings suggest that maternity blues is a strong predictor of postpartum depression. The higher the blues score, the higher the risk of postpartum depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of the effort-reward imbalance (ERI), a work-stress model, on the health-related quality of life (HRQL) of Japanese working men. Consequently, about 1,096 employees from a manufacturing plant in Japan were evaluated to assess the HRQL and ERL though the Japanese version of the Short-Form 8 Health Survey (SF-8). However, it is claimed that only 1,057 out of the 1,096 surveyed employees provided valid responses to the questionnaire.

The article focuses on the occupational physicians' study administered to Japanese steel workers on the relationship between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and hypertension. According to an animal experiment, a significant increase of the daytime blood pressure was observed after the intermittent airway occlusion on the nocturnal sleep. This, however, was regarded by the Joint National Committee (JNC) as sleep apnea syndrome which is claimed to be an identifiable cause of hypertension.

Objectives: We developed a standardized cost estimation method for occupational health (OH) services. The purpose of this study was to set reference OH services costs and to conduct OH services cost management assessments in two workplaces by comparing actual OH services costs with the reference costs., Methods: Data were obtained from retrospective analyses of OH services costs regarding 15 OH activities over a 1-year period in three manufacturing workplaces. We set the reference OH services costs in one of the three locations and compared OH services costs of each of the two other workplaces with the reference costs., Results: The total reference OH services cost was 176,654 Japanese yen (JPY) per employee. The personnel cost for OH staff to conduct OH services was JPY 47,993, and the personnel cost for non-OH staff was JPY 38,699. The personnel cost for receipt of OH services-opportunity cost-was JPY 19,747, expense was JPY 25,512, depreciation expense was 34,849, and outsourcing cost was JPY 9,854. We compared actual OH services costs from two workplaces (the total OH services costs were JPY 182,151 and JPY 238,023) with the reference costs according to OH activity. The actual costs were different from the reference costs, especially in the case of personnel cost for non-OH staff, expense, and depreciation expense., Conclusions: Using our cost estimation tool, it is helpful to compare actual OH services cost data with reference cost data. The outcomes help employers make informed decisions regarding investment in OH services.

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to develop standardized cost estimation tools that provide information to employers about occupational safety and health (OSH) activities for effective and efficient decision making in Japanese companies., Methods: We interviewed OSH staff members including full-time professional occupational physicians to list all OSH activities. Using activity-based costing, cost data were obtained from retrospective analyses of occupational safety and health costs over a 1-year period in three manufacturing workplaces and were obtained from retrospective analyses of occupational health services costs in four manufacturing workplaces. We verified the tools additionally in four workplaces including service businesses., Results: We created the OSH and occupational health standardized cost estimation tools. OSH costs consisted of personnel costs, expenses, outsourcing costs and investments for 15 OSH activities. The tools provided accurate, relevant information on OSH activities and occupational health services., Conclusions: The standardized information obtained from our OSH and occupational health cost estimation tools can be used to manage OSH costs, make comparisons of OSH costs between companies and organizations and help occupational health physicians and employers to determine the best course of action.

The effort-reward imbalance is an important psychosocial factor which is related to poor health among employees. However, there are few studies that have evaluated effort-reward imbalance among medical residents. The present study was done to determine the association between psychosocial factors at work as defined by the effort-reward imbalance model and depression among Japanese medical residents. We distributed a questionnaire to 227 medical residents at 16 teaching hospitals in Japan at the end of August 2005. We asked participants to answer questions which included demographic information, depressive symptoms, effort-reward imbalance, over-commitment and social support. Depression was evaluated using the Japanese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale. The effort-reward imbalance and over-commitment were assessed by the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) questionnaire which Siegrist developed. Social support was determined on a visual analog scale. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the associations between effort-reward imbalance and depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms were found in 35 (29.2%) 1st-year residents and 21 (27.6%) 2nd-year residents. The effort-reward ratio >1 (OR, 8.83; 95% CI, 2.87-27.12) and low social support score (OR, 2.77, 95% CI, 1.36-5.64) were associated with depressive symptoms among medical residents. Effort-reward imbalance was independently related to depression among Japanese medical residents. The present study suggests that balancing between effort and reward at work is important for medical residents' mental health.

The aims of the present study were to develop and validate the Japanese version of the checklist individual strength questionnaire (CIS) which is used to measure prolonged fatigue not only in the general population but also in the working population. We obtained permission to use CIS from its author and translated the questionnaire into Japanese. Then, the Japanese version of the questionnaire was translated back into English by a bilingual person. The author of the original version agreed that the back-translated version was conceptually and linguistically equivalent to the original CIS. To validate CIS, 399 workers (66.7% were men) from different companies answered the Japanese version of the CIS (CIS-J), Maslach burnout inventory-general survey (MBI-GS), Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), visual analogue scale (VAS) questionnaires for subjective fatigue, number of overtime hours and number of hours of sleep. Cronbach's alpha for the total CIS-J score was 0.91. The test-retest reliability assessed with an intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.82. Although confirmatory factor analysis did not show an ideal model fit, the correlation coefficients between the total CIS score and the MBI-GS exhaustion score, the BDI-II score and the VAS score were 0.58 (p<0.01), 0.66 (p<0.01) and 0.63 (p<0.01), respectively. The less workers slept and the longer they worked, the higher their total CIS score became. CIS-J showed good reliability and acceptable validity in the working population. Thus, it could be useful for studying fatigue among Japanese working populations.