United States and Japanese college students' attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help

The purpose of the study was to find how nationality, sex, and past experience of seeking professional psychological services are related to attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Three hundred Japanese college students and 300 US college students responded to the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help (ATSPPH) questionnaire. The ATSPPH consists of four subscales: Need (recognition of need), Stigma Tolerance (the degree of tolerance against stigma associated with help‐seeking action), Openness (interpersonal openness), and Confidence (confidence in mental health professionals). As predicted, past experience of seeking professional psychological service and sex were important predictor variables of performance on the ATSPPH scales. Those who had past experience of seeking professional psychological help had more favourable attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help than those who never consulted psychological professionals. Similarly, in testing the past experience separately with the two nation groups, past experience with seeking professional psychological services was found to be a predictor of the overall attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help among Japanese and US participants. Furthermore, Japanese participants with past experience also showed greater recognition of need for professional psychological help and confidence in psychological health professions than Japanese without past experience. The degree of stigma tolerance associated with help‐seeking behaviour and the tendency of interpersonal openness, however, did not differ between Japanese participants with and without the past experience of seeking professional psychological services. The same results were also found among the US participants. In terms of sex as a predictor variable, females tended to have more positive attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help than males. There was a significant nationality by sex interaction effect. US females had significantly more favourable attitudes than the other three groups, indicating that there was sex difference in help‐seeking attitudes in the US group, but not in the Japanese group. If the sex variable is ignored, Japanese students have less favourable overall attitudes toward seeking professional psychological services than US students. Other results and limitations of the study are discussed.     

The place of advice: Japanese parents' sources of information about childrearing and child health

A survey of 1,150 fathers and 1,147 mothers in four regions of Japan (mean ages: FATHERS = 36.7, MOTHERS = 33.8, CHILDREN = 4.4 years) documented Japanese parents' sources of advice and information about young children. Mothers reported receiving more advice and information from more sources, compared with fathers. However, more husbands and wives cited “my spouse” than any other potential source of advice, and men and women expressed a high level of confidence in each other. Relatively few parents said that they had used professional advice. It is apparent that various sources of parenting knowledge can be facilitated to alleviate the stress felt by today's increasingly isolated parents.     

The middle class Japanese father: A survey of parents of preschoolers

This study examined the evolution and current status of middle class Japanese fathers. 1147 pairs of fathers and mothers participated in a questionnaire survey which covered 4 topics: the paternal role, childrearing goals, characteristics of fathers, and recollections of one's own parents. The respondents defined the father primarily as a breadwinner, support to the mother, and link between children and society. Men ranked the paternal role as their most important role, yet very few fathers were said to be actively involved with their children. The two most common goals of parents were to raise healthy children who could fit into society. A majority of men recalled that their own fathers seldom played with them, and 41% did not think that their fathers were good role models as parents. Finally, men and women both assigned different relative values to their 5 roles (parent, spouse, worker, male/female, and person), compared with the priorities they attributed to their own parents.