4 - Stress-Coping and Traditional Health Care Utilization in Japan

Summary

The emphasis on industrialization and urbanization has developed Japan into one of the leading nations of the world. By raising the nutrition level of its people, improving its health environment (including water and sewage), and expanding its health facilities, it has either greatly reduced the incidence of contagious diseases or completely controlled them. It has also greatly reduced the infant mortality rate and extended the average life expectancy of its people to one of the longest in the world.

Meanwhile, amid changes in life-style triggered by acute social and economic changes, the uncertainties and frustrations of the Japanese have increased greatly. This has served to heighten their physical and mental stress. However, if this is considered from the opposite point of view, it can be argued that the Japanese have been more or less able to cope with these life changes that constitute severe stressors.

What are the factors that have enabled the Japanese, despite being under such stressful conditions, to cope with their severe stress rather successfully and build such a highly developed industrial society?

When people are bombarded by many stressors, they become vulnerable to stress-induced diseases. Moreover, in their attempt to reduce these stressors, a growing number of people lead unhealthy lives engaging in negative coping behaviours such as smoking, overdrinking, or eating to forget their troubles. As a result they suffer from such chronic diseases as high blood pressure, apoplexy, heart disease, mental disorder, liver disease, and diabetes — and there are no signs that the incidence of these diseases is declining (Figure 4.1)

It used to be that one could be cured of most diseases if one enlisted the help of a medical facility, but with the rise in the incidence of chronic diseases, this is no longer the case. Even though the number of medical facilities has increased, the number of patients has also continued to increase. This is because in the case of chronic patients not only are many of them never completely cured; but what is worse is that an increasing number are afflicted with drug-induced iatrogenic diseases (health disorders resulting from treatment).