Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Cultural Issues in Mental Health

Internal, Family and Peer Microsystem Risk and Protective Factors that Relate to Internalizing Behavior in Japanese Youth

Internalizing behavior involves feelings of sadness, loneliness, suicidal ideation and self-dislike. These problems may not be apparent to anyone but the individual who experiences them in contrast to externalizing problems. However, extreme examples of internalizing behaviors are visible in Japanese society in high rates of youth suicide (Bossy, 2000) and social withdrawal, called hikikomori in Japanese (Secher,2002). Although there has been much conjecture about general cultural and societal issues that contribute to severe internalizing behavior, youth suicide and hikikomori, among Japanese youth, there is surprisingly little research concerned with identifying risk and protective factors related to individual differences in internalizing behavior problems. Furthermore, there is also almost no information available on the correlates of less extreme forms of internalizing problems that probably affect a larger percentage of Japanese youth. This study represents an attempt to address this gap in the research literature and to add to our understanding of an area that is of great concern to Japanese society.

This current research explores individual and ecological protective factors and risk factors that relate to internalizing behavior in Japanese youth. Individual characteristics, as well as, developmental histories are surveyed. The youth’s family, peer, school, and neighborhood microsystems are also investigated, as well as, media influences.

The data were collected in the summer of 2002 in the greater Sapporo area of Hokkaido Japan. The individuals who took part in the investigation ranged in age from 18 to 22. To obtain a diverse and representative sample, students from different types of academic institutions were surveyed. Data were collected at nine different academic institutions. The respondents came from four four-year universities, two two-year universities, and three vocational colleges. The total number of respondents was 802.

Pearson’s correlation was used between protective and risk factors and internalizing behavior. Youth who had high internalizing behaviors problem scores were more likely to have a history of physical abuse (.55). Respondents who reported more internalizing behavior problems were also more likely to express confusion over sexual orientation (.49). Youth who experienced internalizing behavior problems more often articulated parental depression (.49). Furthermore, respondents who had high internalizing behaviors problem scores also perceived parental favoritism of a sibling (.49).

Multi-regression analyses were used to predict internalizing behaviors in Japanese youth for the full sample and the female and the male sub-samples. The total variation explained by the model (r square) was .62 for the full sample, .57 for the female sample, and .65 for the male sample. The F value to test the null hypothesis was 71.10 for the full sample, 26.29 for the female sample and 60.90 for the male sample. All were significant at the .001 level.

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