A Study of Psychosocial Factors in the Psychosomatic Symptoms of Adolescents in Okinawa

Abstract

High school students (N = 902) in Okinawa were asked to participate in a questionnaire survey which was designed to investigate the psychosocial factors in the psychosomatic symptoms of adolescents. The questionnaire focused on mental distress, perception of school and home environment and psychosomatic symptoms. The Japanese Edition Cornell Medical Index‐Health Questionnaire (JCMI) for evaluating emotional instability and the New TK Diagnostic Test for Parent‐Child Relationship were also utilized. Distress in relationships with family or friends, finding little pleasure in school and/or home, showing emotional instability as diagnosed according to regions III and IV of JCMI, or showing strained parent‐child relationships according to the TK Test items were found to be closely associated with psychosomatic symptoms. In addition, students with human relations problems, especially family problems, tended to have a strained relationship with parents and tended to show autonomic hyperactivity represented by orthostatic dysregulation. Students with peer problems tended to have emotional instability and to find little pleasure in school; they had mental as well as urinary and bowel symptoms. The findings of this study suggest that distresses in family or peer relationships, emotional instability and a strained parent‐child relationship are important factors in the onset of psychosomatic symptoms in adolescents.

Japanese clinical guidelines for juvenile orthostatic dysregulation version 1

“…Students and workers who are overloaded sometimes develop a burnout syndrome, which involves the autonomic nervous system. 39 Previous studies reported that Japanese children with symptoms of OD have psychosocial problems including personality, 40 human relationship 41 and family problems. 42,43 In agreement with this, more than half of the children with OD have school refusal (phobia) and 30 -40% children with school refusal have OD.…”

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“…The core concepts of neurocirculatory asthenia were borrowed into Japan, but with orthostatic dizziness made the central focus, and a new name given: orthostatic dysregulation (Abe, 1990;Honda, Nose, Yoshida, Tanimura, & Tanaka, 1977;Igarashi, 1971;Nakada, 1992;Nozawa et al, 1996Nozawa et al, , 1997Tanaka, Thulesius, Borres, Yamaguchi, & Mino, 1994;Torigoe et al, 2001). 9 In orthostatic dysregulation (Abe, 1990), the person has:…”