Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had an annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.

The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless very proactive and well funded local and nation wide suicide prevention programs and initiatives are immediately it is very difficult to foresee the governments previously stated intention to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.

The current numbers licensed psychiatrists (around 13,000), Japan Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists clinical psychologists (16,732 as of 2007), and Psychiatric Social Workers (39,108 as of 2009) must indeed be increased. In order for professional mental health counseling and psychotherapy services to be covered for depression and other mental illnesses by public health insurance it would seem advisable that positive action is taken to resume and complete the negotiations on how to achieve national licensing for clinical psychologists in Japan through the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and not just the Ministry of Education as is the current situation. These discussions were ongoing between all concerned mental health professional authorities that in the ongoing select committee and ministerial levels that were ongoing during the Koizumi administration. With the current economic recession adding even more hardship and stress in the lives its citizens, now would seem to be a prime opportunity for the responsible Japanese to take a pro-active approach to finally providing government approval for national licensing for clinical psychologists who provide mental health care counseling and psychotherapy services to the people of Japan.

During these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions. Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only to clearly if any journalist is prepared to learn Japanese or get a bilingual researcher to do the research to get to the real heart of the tragic story of the long term and unnecessarily high suicide rate problem in Japan.

Useful telephone number for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal: Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：

Japan: 0120-738-556 Tokyo: 3264 4343

Andrew Grimes

Tokyo Counseling Services

http://tokyocounseling.com/english/

http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/

http://www.counselingjapan.com

I do think there is some invasion of privacy with the parole aspect but if you break the law you loose some of your rights-like privacy.

It will be interesting to see where this tech goes in the years to come.

Ya, this is such a mess; I hope this isnt business as usual.

You are a disgusting waste of space!

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/140440

Since I can’t delete my earlier comment, I thought it would be respectful to mention that here.

http://tinyurl.com/d7rep3

Reminds me of the Dave Chappelle episode where he is walking around the “internet” in real life. Pretty skeazy…

Wayne Anthony Ross

My favorite is the way folks seem to form a cohort when all the roadtrippers hop off the ferry in Haines and are headed in the same northerly direction…I remember when I did the first leg of the trip alone one year and all the bikers and a few families that were in my “cohort” looked out for me. Different ones of us would bump into each other at customs, the gas station in Haines Junction, the restaurant in Haines Junction, a few other various little stops (I think the Kluane Lake lookout area/bathrooms) and even Fast Eddies in Tok!

“Mount Bradley, also known as Mount Jumbo, is 3,337 feet high and is on Douglas Island with Douglas, Alaska at its foot. In the early years it was named Mount Jumbo, possibly after the Jumbo mining claim located near its base. The people of Douglas in 1939 petitioned the Board of Geographic names to have the mountain renamed after Frederick Worthen Bradley. Mr. Bradley, 1863 – 1933, was president of the Bunker Hill Mine and Sullivan Mine in Idaho, president of the Tacoma Smelting Co., president of the Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Co., and president of the Treadwell, Mexican, and Alaska United Gold Mining Companies – the latter three on Douglas Island southeast of Douglas. He was also a director of the First National Bank of Juneau as well as banks in San Francisco. He was awarded the Saunders Gold Medal for outstanding achievement in mining.”

(http://westjuneau.com/WordPress/2008/09/17/mount-bradley/)

What is ugly anyways? I think arrogant, selfish people are ugly.

For the record, “Today Dave” is usually extremely pissed off with “Yesterday Dave” for not being more productive…

And the Supreme Court’s decision seems to be unsatisfying for the amount of damages that Exxon had caused.

Hospitals are not what makes people healthy! What we choose to put into our bodies and lots of exercise makes us healthy. And the more attention one gives these tasks the more in tune they become with their being; allowing them to continually enhance themselves.

One other thing…It is only the last 100 years that humans view most ailments as fixable or cureable. Seriously, 100 years ago the flu was deadly, always! Now if 3 people die in the Midwest because of this year’s flu everyone rushes to Safeway to get vaccinated. Used to be everyone died!

Drink milk and your bones wont break.
Eat protein and carbs and you’ll have energy.
Drink water and you wont get sick.
Dont smoke or drink alcohol or eat things with an ingredients list longer than 5 items.
Boo ya!

One of the interviews I found (http://tinyurl.com/chlkjt) discusses the financial aspects of marital status discrimination: the wedding gifts (Here’s a tangent: I was reminded of that Sex in the City episode where Carrie’s $500-ish Manolo’s are lost at a friend’s baby shower…long story short, Carrie ends up “registering” to marry herself in order to get her friend to replace the shoes because she has spent a fortune on wedding/baby gifts for the friend and feels that it is not fair that she has never had the same amount of money/gifts lavished upon her because of her marital/non-parental status), the tax incentives, etc.

I am generally wary of those who behave as though they know what is right (politicians claiming they have THE answer come to mind) without being able to acknowledge the different perceived realities of others and the legitimacy of those differences.

It may be a stretch but the same idea that he was crippled by guilt for the trauma he caused when stealing $7 or so dollars from his kid brother but not making the connection that by overdosing he would do infinitely more damage to his young sibling presents an interesting psychological mechanism.

I’m not sure what it is called but I know I am also guilty of making and accepting decisions that harm myself directly more easily than I would ever choose to directly harm someone I love – even though by harming myself I indirectly hurt those very same people because they love me.

Not a good plan. I wonder what exactly they were thinking?

I was thinking about this issue recently, when Sen. Kim Elton resigned about a month ago. It turns out that the governor gets to appoint someone for his seat in the state senate. Granted it has to be from the same party as Elton’s (Democrat), but still – she gets to choose which Democrat she wants.

Kim Elton was not all that great, but the one thing that he was able to do is stop any capital move in the Senate (Elton was part of the Coalition, of which many would not stand in the way of a capital move). Palin might do exactly that and choose a democrat who won’t mix up her plans. I hope I am wrong.

I was reflecting on my reaction to people in our class getting married and/or having children and I realized that despite the circumstances in which both of these actions occur, I am always congratulating! There is never a circumstance where it seems socially acceptable to say, “Oh, that’s too bad that you don’t get to wait until you are financially stable or emotionally mature.” This is regardless of whether or not that is the truth.

It it most likely my own cultural conditioning but sometimes (not always) the glossing over of the irresponsibility present in either getting married too young or for the wrong reasons or having a child (perhaps by accident) at a less than ideal time irks me!

I find it ironic that a SWIMMING POOL, of all places, would ban breastfeeding. This is the place where people strip down to minimal coverings and frolic in water. If we can’t agree that a mom breastfeeding at the pool is undoubtedly the least offensive scenario at any given moment in that pool area, we’re in trouble.

http://xkcd.com/441/

I just love their stuff.

From what I understand of economics as most people see it (involving math and theories) versus what makes it a true social science (the argument and debate between orthodoxy and heterodoxies, the analysis of WHERE current economic thought comes from and the historical context in which it was created, the idea that gender and class are imagined “out” of many economic theories) your argument about what is SUPPOSED to happen and what you think will ACTUALLY happen is a perfect example of a more thorough definition of economics that includes the ongoing debate among economists.

Not that I am arguing for ashleymadison.com.

I do find it a little sleazy that in his targeting women specifically as customers, he used two popular baby names to brand his product as female-friendly and appealing, or “safe.” Especially since he used my name.

It’s all so confusing, and I’m momentarily grateful that my daughter loves Thomas the Tank Engine more than anything else in the world…

Natal and. Neonatal. Teeth. Among the Tlinget. Indians. JOHN. T. MAYHALL. University of. Chicago,. Department of. Anthropology
http://jdr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/46/4/748.pdf

The case study only involved 90 individuals. But it was interesting to see local information in a national case study. I was interested to learn that no superstitions were associated .

When the Supreme Court validated “separate but equal” laws in 1896, opponents argued that the government was permitting an immoral system to take root. When the NAACP began mounting legal challenges to the laws during the 1920s, however, they attacked those laws on practical grounds. Rather than argue that “separate but equal” was inherently unconstitutional, they tried to force states the live up to the “equal” part of the equation — they agreed that segregation was inherently wrong, but their hope was to make segregation so expensive that states would give it up. They didn’t lose sight of their larger moral objection to segregation, but they used a strategy of chipping away at the law until the law was no longer viable.

Anyhow, by 1954, the NAACP had won a lot of cases along these lines. Rather than build separate law schools for blacks, for example, states like Oklahoma and Texas just gave up and allowed black students to enroll at OU and UT. In the meantime, the court came around on the basic constitutional/moral question and ruled in Brown that segregated schools were inherently unjust…

I don’t know if that’s the best analogy, but look at it this way — public opinion still supports capital punishment in the abstract. But when people understand that the death penalty tends to be applied only to the poorest defendants; when they hear about the inadequate representation that defendants receive; and so on — when they are aware of these problems with procedure and application of the law, they support it less enthusiastically…

Maybe at the end of it all, this approach does nothing other than whittle the application of the death penalty down to a small number of cases where there’s no evidence of racial or economic bias, no evidence of inadequate representation, and so on. But I tend to think that capital punishment — like segregation — is not only wrong but that it can’t be applied in a just way. So I don’t see the practical and moral arguments as being in competition with each other — I’d hope at some point they’d converge…

I don’t know if that makes any sense. Stop making me think so hard on a Sunday…

But what got me is this idea that we would use a technicality and not the guts of an issue to be “right”. What I imagine is if the proponents were able to eventually create the system or structure in which capital punishment occurred only when it was supposed to, without sway from economic/racial/political factors, (this is an idealized imagining, of course) what do opponents fall back on then? Our argument would then become null without the efficiency aspect, even though the REAL reason many opponents are against the death penalty is largely due to their morality judgement being different than proponents’.

I wonder about the Justice Center argument, though — seems to me that on any policy issue, there’s no reason to limit the scope of the debate to one set of questions. If you can win the debate on the grounds of efficiency, why not win it there? But I think the efficiency and morality arguments are linked — opponents of capital punishment would argue, I think, that an inexpensive system would inevitably lead to errors that would ultimately produce immoral outcomes…

The biggest critique made in the film was of Gore’s inability to take the changes he was recommending (for example fuel efficient vehicles) out of the capitalist structure (he rails about our inability to sell our vehicles in China because we don’t meet their environmental standards, or basically the idea that we need to become competative). It was a decently interesting film (the way it was put together was not entirely grabbing, plus some of the critique was a little weak) but an even more interesting panel discussion.

You really encapsulate the ridiculousness of our (“our” being the WORLD) situation well. I wish I had any beneficial insight whatsoever; I can’t help but think “who knows?”

Won’t some always argue that someone else deserves the award more, no matter who wins?

I knew nothing about the “self-created image of political activism” in this awards show…always good to learn something new.

As far as just because a person can physically create a child doesn’t mean they should…how many cases of that do we see in looking around? But the alternative to letting people make those choices (whether they are consciously made or not) is to have someone else make the decisions…and who do we trust with that kind of power – government? No thanks.

Some systems are in place simply because they are the lesser of evils it would seem.

I’m with you on this.

It seems to me like it is more common nowadays that we hear about kids killing people. However, I wonder if this just has to do with media coverage. Maybe people have begun to realize it is becoming a problem. However, the media itself (in my opinion) is part of the problem. Honestly, I think if school shootings and other such things weren’t so widely publicized there wouldn’t be so many similar incidents….copycat behavior…or we’re just planting the idea in people’s heads.
Locking a child in jail isn’t going to rehabilitate him or her, or probably help them out. However, I don’t think it is right to not charge the kid as an adult and then just sweep it under the rug when he or she turns 18…..as what happens with most crimes committed by a juvenile. So no, maybe the laws aren’t 100% appropriate, but until someone figures out something better, this is all we’ve got.

(1) Kids have been killing adults for all of recorded history. Is there something unique about this case that should cause us to wonder if “kids these days” are worse than ever?

(2) What are the benefits (perceived or actual) of trying children as adults? The psychology profession is pretty much on-board with the idea that these laws aren’t appropriate. If the kid “needs help,” is the adult criminal justice system the best means of delivering it?

(3) It would be interesting to know what Florida’s gun laws actually look like. Do they require gun locks? I poked around to see, and I can’t find any evidence they do….

Lost in all this is the fact that the woman who was attacked by the chimpanzee has pretty much lost her face. Literally. The chimp tore her face off, and doctors are considering a facial transplant. When the cartoon was drawn, it was unclear that the victim would even live. So add “tasteless” and “unfunny” to “possibly racist” and “illogical.”

“We teach in principles that the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. So, you are correct. It is a rather simple definition, however, and as you know economics is rarely simple. There are lots of things that occur during a recession including declining real GDP, disinflation (slowing of inflation) and possibly deinflation (drop in price level), higher levels of unemployment, slowing of housing starts, slowing of retail sales, etc. The NBER will look at a number of factors to determine the “official” start and end of recession or expansion and from the one article it looks like to me that they weighted job losses heavily. There is little doubt that we are in a recession among economists, a severe one at that and we have been in it for some time. The debate for economists is what it is going to take to get out of it. I hope this helps.”