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The purpose of this paper is to clarify future research prospects through a review of how organizational factors are positioned in typical occupational stress models. As a result, organizational factors are regarded as trivialized in occupational stress models. In addition, organizational factors addressed in the typical models have been summarized into three categories: “social support”, “organizational justice”, and “organizational climate”. Therefore, the research issues for the refinement of the occupational stress model were clarified by reviewing previous studies about these factors.

Workplace bullying or harassment has been emerging as a serious social issue in recent years. The research on workplace bullying started in the 1990s in foreign countries. However, there have been few researches on this issue in Japan. In this paper we reviewed how the research on workplace bullying developed abroad, and considered the subjects and the perspectives of workplace bullying. As a result, it was revealed that while the researches on the effect of workplace bullying were sufficient, those on the antecedents or the prevention of workplace bullying were insufficient. Especially, there were few researches on the prevention of workplace bullying. In the future, it is required to accumulate scientific knowledge about the antecedent of workplace bullying and consider the prevention of workplace bullying with reference to the examples from these knowledge or programs for the prevention of bullying in schools.

In recent years, studies on resilience have been increasing at home and abroad. One of the reasons of this increase is that resilience has attracted a lot of expectations because it is believed to enhance social adaptation. However, in the studies on resiliency so far, we have had no sole fixed definition for this concept of. In these studies, the term “resilience” was used in different ways, and the methods and the objects of these studies were different as well. Therefore, we have had a lot of confusion over this concept. In addition, the differences between the concept of resilience and the psychological stress model are not clear, either. In this paper, we will review how the resilience concept developed in studies of abroad. Also, we will cover the existing issues while providing the overview of the current status of resiliency studies in Japan.

In recent years,researchers have begun to pay increasing attention to the issue of work-life balance. In the present study,we attempted to review the recent literature and to categorize the various antecedents and consequences of the two aspects of work-life balance: work family conflict and work family facilitation. The factors of work family conflict/facilitation were classified as three categories: work related factors,family related factors and,demographic/individual factors. The findings showed that work family conflict was influenced by work hours,role overload,job stressors,job autonomy,social support and organizational policies in work domain and,family structure,social support in family domain. On the other hand,work family facilitation was influenced by job autonomy,social support. Work family conflict/facilitation had impact on job and family satisfaction,behaviors and mental health. Work family conflict/facilitation have the same and unique factors,and therefore,require different solutions to prevent conflict and benefit facilitation. Lastly,it is considered that further study is needed to 1)put emphasis on the two directions of work family conflict/facilitation, 2)put more focus on work family facilitation.

Over the past 40 years, the number of science and technology students in Japan has increased by 10% in undergraduate programs and by 400% in master’s programs. As a result, the number of students continuing to master’s programs from undergraduate programs has changed from one in ten 40 years ago to one in three now. This is because Japan set national graduate institution standards in 1974 and aggressively increased the number of students continuing to science and technology master’s programs, in addition to training researchers, with the purpose of cultivating the skills needed in jobs that require a high level of expertise. How have the circumstances changed regarding these increased science and technology undergraduate and master’s students finding employment? As a general outline of the status of science and technology students finding employment, we conducted a study on the following three topics: instructor awareness, student characteristics, and recruiting activities. We found that science and technology instructors are aware of the need to change their educational aims from specialized academic skills to the acquisition of problem-solving abilities sought by society, but the closing of departments and laboratories in response to reform is an inhibiting factor. Furthermore, the rising importance of research papers for assessing instructors suggests the likelihood that there is pressure on instructors to spend less time on students. Science and technology students enter university with the goal of doing research and spend long hours on it, but are slow to participate in club activities, feel that they might not be good at communication, and tend to not interact much with instructors. There are worries that their neglect of extracurricular activities and contact with instructors has a negative effect on student life. Regarding the path of science and technology students applying for employment, very few students use recommendations from departments and laboratories, and open recruitment is now the norm. Company recruitment policies emphasize the quality of students, and it was evident that the trend of screening job applicants by spending a great deal of time communicating with them through long interviews and long-term internships is likely to increase. This series of changes concerning finding employment moves more of the responsibility for job hunting to science and technology students. In the future, it will be important to plan for the promotion of self-fulfillment through finding work.

A substantial number of students are falling into psychological crises such as refusal to attend school, bullying, and delinquency at junior high schools. In this study, we have defined the method of responding to these students’ psychological crises by a team of teachers and specialists as “psychological crisis management for students in a school setting.” Our aim was to extract the functions necessary for schools to implement appropriate psychological crisis management. We chose 5 cases of students’ psychological crises at school, analyzed them by using the psychological crisis level stage model, and extracted the relevant functions. The functions extracted were: “the psychological crisis recognition function (evaluation and prediction of psychological crises)”; “the situation judgment function”; “the psychological crisis coping function (psychological crisis convergence and psychological education)”; and “the organizational improvement function.”

Many people who suffer from mental health problem do not seek professional services, a phenomenon called the “service gap.” Many studies have been conducted to investigate professional help-seeking, and to clarify ways to facilitate the use of mental health services. In the present study, a systematic review was conducted to provide an overview of previous findings, and to classify factors associated with help-seeking attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. The initial database search returned 1,276 international and domestic studies. A total of 74 studies, published between 1972 and 2016, met the criteria for inclusion. As a result of the coding process, 9 demographic factors (sex, age, race/ethnicity, educational level, economic status, marital status, insurance status, sexual orientation, and place of residence), 19 facilitators, and 14 barriers were indicated. The facilitators and inhibitors were categorized as distress, previous experience, mental health literacy, psychological factors, social factors, cultural factors, and others. By counting the number of studies that show a significant correlation between factors, it was revealed that psychological factors, cultural factors, and previous experiences related to mental health were mainly associated with help-seeking attitudes. On the other hand, demographic factors, distress, mental health literacy, and beliefs about help effectiveness were related to help-seeking attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Additionally, suggestions from family/friends and social norms were positively related to help-seeking behavior and help-seeking attitudes respectively, while social support was negatively related to help-seeking attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Further study is needed to 1) construct a comprehensive model of professional help-seeking, 2) develop interventions to facilitate help-seeking, and 3) investigate the effects of cultural factors with Japanese subjects.

Mental health care at workplace is gradually improving in Japan in these days. On the other hand, many workers don’t utilize mental health care even if they have mental problems. In order to improve mental health of workers, it is important to facilitate workers’ utilization of mental health care. Perceived workplace climate is an important factor which influence workers’ utilization of health services. For better intervention to facilitate workers’ help-seeking toward mental health care, this study investigated actual situation of perceived workplace climate, help-seeking, and mental health of male workers. A questionnaire was distributed to 650 male full-time workers. One-way analysis of variance was conducted to investigate the difference by age, post, and company size. The results showed that workers who are elder, in a higher post, and work at bigger company reported better perceived workplace climate. Additionally, younger subjects reported lower help-seeking and higher depressiveanxious mood. Depressive-anxious mood were also high with workers who are in low post and smaller company. These result revealed that perception of workplace climate, help-seeking and mental health changes depends on workers position and situation. Therefore, it is important to take into account those difference for better mental health care at workplace.