A new 1-h educational program was developed to change attitudes towards mental illness, and was conducted on 95 first-year medical students in order to investigate its effects on their attitudes towards mental illness, using a pre-and postquestionnaire study design. A similar study without the program was conducted on 94 first-year medical students as controls. After the program, more students replied that they would accept former patients on relatively close social distance items. Favorable attitudinal changes were observed in terms of 'psychiatric services', 'human rights of the mentally ill', 'patients' independence in social life', and 'cause and characteristics of mental illness'. In contrast, no significant change was observed in the control group. These results suggest that attitudes towards mental illness could be changed favorably by this program.

Article abstractObjective: To investigate the relationship between leukoaraiosis (LA), which has been considered as an intermediate substitute of ischemic brain damages, and metabolic syndrome (MetS) that attracts attention as a risk factor for cerebrovascular diseases, in healthy subjects derived from various age groups. Methods:We studied 1,030 healthy persons at ages between 28 and 78 years (mean, 52.7 years) with no past history of stroke who visited a health care facility for routine health checkups. MetS was defined using the criteria of the National Cholesterol

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We showed a U-shaped association between the average level of systolic blood pressure measured at home and mortality in older men while adjusting for potential confounding factors including morbidity and frailty. Not only high home systolic BP, but also low home systolic BP, is an independent risk factor for mortality in older men. The mechanisms underlying the association between BP and mortality differ by levels of systolic BP. Cardiovascular deaths tended to be higher in the highest SBP group, and only noncardiovascular deaths were increased in the lowest SBP group. The latter finding suggests that low SBP may be not only an independent risk of mortality but also an indicator of a subclinical noncardiovascular comorbid condition.

Background: Stress, mental health and depression at the workplace have emerged as common and significant problems. The effectiveness of a stress-management program at the workplace was investigated. Methods: The effectiveness of a stress-management program was examined in workers at a highly stressful workplace using a randomized controlled trial. The 58 workers in the office were randomly assigned into a stress-management group (n = 28) and a control group (n = 30). The stress-management program included lectures on the perception of stress, measures to cope with it, stress-management recording sheets, and e-mail counseling. This program was based on the cognitive behavioral approach. The stress-management program was carried out for 3 months, and perceived work-related stress and psychological symptoms were evaluated using: General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-30, Center for Epidemiologic Study for Depression (CES-D), the Questionnaire of Work-Related Stress and the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire. Twenty-one out of the 28 in the stress-management group and all in the control group were successfully followed up. Results: In the stress-management group, a significant improvement in the depressive symptoms was observed, compared with the control group in CES-D (p = 0.003 by two-tailed paired t-test, and p = 0.042 by repeated measure analysis of variance). In the multiple regression analysis, the effect of stress management on depressive symptoms at follow-up was significant (p = 0.041), controlling for potential confounding factors. However, the alleviation of perceived occupational stress was limited. Conclusions: A stress-management program based on the cognitive behavioral approach at the workplace may have potential for the prevention of depression.