A structured interview was used to examine the 1-year incidence and prevalence of depression among 116 first-year university students. Moreover, 23 of the subjects (19.8%) had onset of the DSM-IV criteria for MDE, 54 (46.6%) had onset of the DSM-III-R criteria for MDE, 24 (20.7%) had onset of the RDC for MDD, during the same time period. These high rates of depression may be explained by the students' difficulties in and by their readjustment after entering university.

In order to categorize the items of the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) so as to allow the construction of subscales, the Japanese version of the SDS was administered to a total of 2,258 undergraduates. Principal-component analyses of the SDS extracted three factors interpretable as cognitive, affective, and somatic symptoms. The SDS was then administered to 597 undergraduates in order to cross-validate the factor structures. The coefficient of congruence and the goodness-of-fitness index generated by a confirmatory factor analysis showed good cross-validity of the factor structures.

The Structured Interview for Competency and Incompetency Assessment Testing and Ranking Inventory (SICIATRI) is a structured interview guide to assess the competency for giving informed consent to treatment among psychiatric and medical patients. The competency levels of 48 psychiatric and medical inpatients were assessed by SICIATRI. A relatively high- inter-rater reliability of the SICIATRI items (over half of the items had kappa > or = .60) and concurrent validity (sensitivity = .83, specificity = .67 as measured against the global judgement of competency rating by the attending physician) were obtained. In addition to its brevity (it takes about 20 minutes to complete), these findings may warrant application of this instrument in a clinical setting.

Interpersonal touch has been little studied empirically as an indicator of parent-and peer-child intimacy. Undergraduate students (n = 390) were studied using a questionnaire survey regarding the frequencies of interpersonal touch by father, mother, same-sex peers, and opposite-sex peers during preschool ages, grades 1-3, grades 4-6, and grades 7-9, as well as their current attachment style to a romantic partner and current depression. A path model indicated that current depression was influenced significantly by poorer self-and otherimages as well as by fewer parental interpersonal touches throughout childhood. Other-image was influenced by early (up to grade 3) parental interpersonal touch. Our findings suggest that a lower frequency of parental touching during childhood influences the development of depression and contributes to a poorer image of an individual's romantic partner during later adolescence and early adulthood.