The physical and psychological problems of immigrants to Japan who require psychosomatic care: a retrospective observation study

Abstract

BackgroundAs the number of immigrants to Japan increases, the health problems of foreign nationals also have an increasing impact on Japanese medical institutions. The aim of this study was to clarify the Japan–specific health problems related to both the physical and psychological symptoms of foreign nationals from the viewpoint of psychosomatic medicine. The second aim was to clarify the measures that should be taken in Japan and similar countries where immigration may still be considered less than common.Case PresentationThe study period was from June 2004 to May 2015. The data of non-Japanese patients who had visited the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Kinki University Hospital and its branches, Sakai Hospital and Nihonbashi Clinic, were collected. All patients were aged 16 years or over. Multiple factors, such as age, sex, nationality, length of stay, marital status, employment status, level of Japanese proficiency, clinical symptoms, physical and psychiatric diagnosis, psycho-social factors and therapy were retrospectively analyzed from the medical charts of 20 non-Japanese patients. Cases were divided into two groups; early onset and late onset cases. This study showed that multiple factors related to the health problems of non-Japanese patients were combined and had a mutual influence, however, they can be summarized into two important clinical observations. These are 1) cultural differences, and 2) language barriers related to both the physical and psychological symptoms of non-Japanese patients from the viewpoint of psychosomatic medicine.ConclusionsFuture efforts should focus on sensitizing health care professionals in Japan to the psychosomatic problems of non-Japanese patients as well as on facilitating medical systems with services such as medical professional interpreters and liaison-consultation models. It is essential to take measures against language barriers and to promote the field of transcultural psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine in Japan. In addition, the Japanese government should introduce a more comprehensive social support system for non-Japanese people.

Mental well-being of international migrants to Japan: a systematic review

“…Two studies enrolled non-pregnant migrants41 42 and eight exclusively analysed mothers 43–50. The remaining nine studies were of general migrant populations of a single (n=5) or various (n=4) nationalities 51–59. There were 10 studies specifically examining Brazilians of Japanese descent, making them the most studied nation-specific migrant subgrouping in terms of mental well-being 60–70…”

“…The study with by far the largest sample size, used government survey records from Hamamatsu, Ibaraki Prefecture, to study the social connectedness of 1252 Brazilians migrants 65. There were also four retrospective surveys of institutional medical records over several years identified by our study 27 52 54 60. Taking into account the difficulty of sampling, samples were viewed as often justifiable to measure specific communities but representative cross-sections of entire migrant populations.…”

Predictive association between immigration status and chronic pain in the general population: results from the SwePain cohort

“…Previous research using longitudinal data has also shown that immigrants are generally at higher risk of poor health [8] (e.g., ischaemic heart disease, diabetes, and stroke) [9][10][11]. Additionally, being an immigrant has been associated with a number of psychosocial issues such as economic stress, difficulties in adaptation, increased ambiguity for the future, changes in living conditions and in personal ties, and disruptions of usual social roles and networks [12][13][14][15].…”

The Impact of Maternal Prenatal Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety on Infant Birth Weight in Japanese Primiparous Women

“…The Japanese version of the STAI reported high reliability and validity (Nakazato et al, 1982). For women, the cutoff scores of state anxiety 41/42 and trait anxiety 44/45 were adopted for the assessment of anxiety in previous Japanese studies (Yamanishi et al, 2013;Koyama et al, 2016). The Cronbach α of state anxiety was 0.915-0.917, and trait anxiety was 0.911-0.920, in this study.…”