Wishing you a very healty, peaceful and wonderful New Year!
明けましておめでとうございます！今年も宜しくお願いします！
From Andrew Grimes and all the Counseling and Psychotherapy Team at Tokyo Counseling Services.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Happy New Year! 開けましておめでとうございます！今年も宜しくお願いします！Click here to set a title.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Red Cross Professionals
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/media/redcross.html
The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disasters Red Cross Work
The need for Psychosocial Support and Mental Health Treatment.
The article also highlights the need to, as far as is practical, maintain and support the survivors "... Psychologist Nana Wiedemann, head of IFRC’s Reference Centre for Psychosocial Support in Copenhagen, Denmark, says that assigning roles to survivors adds a sense of meaning to their situation, as does introducing some familiar elements of everyday life. “It would be very important to establish some kind of routine,” she explains. “Of course, this is not a normal situation, but things like cooking food, playing with the children, taking care of the elderly and being a part of defining what the group needs and how these needs can be met are important.” People typically wake up at the centre at around 05:30 each morning. Some head to work through the debris-strewn streets, littered with upturned cars and boats, while others return to their homes to salvage possessions or begin repairs. The Japanese government aims to relocate all evacuees to temporary housing by the end of August. Tokyo-based clinical psychologist Andrew Grimes says this will be an important step towards improving mental health. “Those living in evacuation shelters have added stresses in that they lack privacy,” he says. “So it may be harder to grieve and share their feelings and comfort each other fully.” The JRCS says it will continue its psychosocial activities until the end of June before deciding if its teams still need to be deployed. Even after evacuees move into temporary housing, Oguri says it’s vital that they continue to be monitored and provided with follow-up health and mental care. Clinical psychologist Grimes agrees: “A rise in the number of people in the disaster zone suffering from depression and alcohol abuse may well be seen in time.” As for Asano, she doesn’t know yet if she’ll return to live in her home as she worries about the future threat of tsunami. For now, she remains focused on helping others at the centre slowly piece together their lives. “Maybe I work hard because I don’t want to remember that day or have nightmares,” she says, before rushing off to organize the evening’s entertainment. ”. Please click here read the full online article in English, "Mending Minds" written by Nick Jones for the the International Red Cross magazine.
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Magazine
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Your Donations to the Japanese and International Red Cross
Your donations can make a big difference to the lives and futures of the survivors and their children. Please think about giving after you watch this video address from President Konoe of the Japanese Red Cross Society - "Six Months on from the Great East Japan Earthquake":
Information on how to easily Donate to the Japanese Red Cross Society. or to theUnited Kingdom Red Cross Relief Fund for Japan to help bring more, comfort, care and hope to the survivors of The Great East Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster please.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Radiation Zone
Remembrance and Resistance in Fukushima
Christmas in the Radiation Zone
It’s the first thing you notice. Electric orange, ripe and luscioushoshigaki hang from every bough. As we drive through the country and over the glittering, snow-specked mountain range from Fukushima city to Soma on the northeast coast of Japan, we pass many persimmon trees dotting the landscape, all laden with fruit, ready for harvesting. But this year, the persimmons of Fukushima prefecture will remain untouched. Bounty only for microbial decomposers, they are a silent reminder of the slow-burning, far-reaching menace of a nuclear accident.
Since March 11, local people, long skilled in farming this verdant and fertile region, have added expert knowledge in radiation to their library of stored knowledge, and the persimmons are deemed unsafe; irradiated by the releases from the stricken nuclear plant at Fukushima-Daiichi, 25km south of here. I am told the dried fruit, until now a local specialty, has particularly high levels of radioactive contamination.
As we drove through the glistening mountains I watched the readings of the omnipresent dosimeter dangling casually from the rearview mirror of Hiroyuki’s car first oscillate, then grow alarmingly. Arriving in front of a children’s summer camp, and quietly handed a face-mask, an ominous beeping sound began as the readings peaked above 1 micro-sievert per hour, corroborated by a second dosimeter brought by Yuuki to check the calibration. We pass an old local incinerator at work burning refuse and the numbers spike again.
Once confined to nuclear facilities and university laboratories, the people of Fukushima prefecture have become amateur radiologists, tracking radiation from place to place as wind and rain transport it around in random patterns across the local landscape.
Worried and angry because they have not received accurate information from the Japanese government about the radiation threat and because they want the government to evacuate more affected areas, the people of Fukushima have had to take matters in to their own hands. The government’s own recently released Interim Report on the causes and lessons of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster highlights how poorly information was provided, “The following tendency was observed: transmission and public announcement of information on urgent matter(s) was delayed, press releases were withheld, and explanations were kept ambiguous. Whatever the reasons behind (this), such tendency was hardly appropriate, in view of communication in an emergency.” According to the people of Fukushima, this tendency is continuing, especially now that Prime Minister Noda announced that the nuclear crisis has “been resolved”.
In Fukushima city the people are organizing to protect and monitor themselves. In a slightly surreal experience, I am directed to one of the many Mecca’s to Japanese consumerism that are a feature of every town. But rather than shopping, inside the mall I am taken to the recently set-up Citizens Radioactivity Measuring Station. Just inside are neatly arranged slippers, children’s toys and a blackboard. Behind the counter there’s equipment to test food for radiation as well as a whole body counter where children and adults come by daily to check their body’s radiation levels. It’s run almost entirely by volunteers who have received radiological health training from a French NGO and is free for anyone below the age of 20.
On entering an apartment building in Fukushima city, in contrast to your usual artwork, neat hand-written columns of radiation levels are posted in the foyer. Data collected every seven days from the surrounding area shows fluctuating radiation levels; particularly high readings are circled in red.
The cows have been evacuated from here but apparently beyond the 20km compulsory evacuation zone it’s deemed safe for humans, even small and growing ones. Hiroyuki, an employee at a children’s non-profit turned public health activist evacuated his wife and four year old daughter first to Tokyo, then Kyoto. He now sees them just once per month as he has stayed to ensure that the national and regional government takes the health risks of the people here seriously. He is part of a growing campaign by the newly formed organization Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, to get the government to reverse its new radiation guidelines, evacuate more people from high radiation levels, especially children and provide support for those who have voluntarily evacuated
Radiation from the three severely damaged reactors that suffered explosions andcore meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant complex has spread far and wide. Apart from evacuating those within a 20 km radius, the government raised the allowable radiation does twenty times, from the internationally recognized 1mSv/year to 20. This means that anywhere over 0.6 micro sieverts/h, an amount previously limited to people working in “radiologically controlled areas”, is no longer cause for evacuation, radically depressing the numbers of evacuees.
Even though the emergency evacuation centers are said to be “temporary”, it is likely that thousands of the 110,000 people who have been evacuated, in particular those from around Fukushima-Daiichi and downwind of the radioactive plume, will never be able to return to their former homes due to long-lived radioisotopes contaminating the ground, food and water. Indeed, the Interim Report concludes with “bearing in mind that many people are still obliged to spend restricted life in evacuation for a long period of time, suffering from radiation contamination or fears of health due to exposure, contaminated air, soils, water and food.”
Even before the report, some people I met are now referring to themselves as the “Fukushima Diaspora” rather than “evacuees” because they don’t believe they will ever be able to return.
We arrive in the small community of Isobe on the coast. Or at least, what remains of Isobe. We are met by Toshiko Kooriki at her new temporary housing, orderly rows of small prefabricated living quarters. She takes us to see the stubby concrete remnants of her original house. They jut a couple of feet up from the barren moonscape that was once a small close-knit community of 400 families just inland from where the tsunami hit. She points out the different rooms and tells us that she comes here from time to time and cries.
Japan, long a study in contrasts, yields another as we meet Hatsumi Terashima, a fisherman for 54 years though he is no longer a fisherman.
Hatsuma Terashima recounts his experience with the tsunami, standing inside all that is left of his house. The flat expanse of mud in the background is where the rest of the village used to be. He lost two of his grandchildren, a son, his son’s wife and his mother-in-law in the tsunami.
Immediately after the earthquake, he was inside rearranging fallen items when the tsunami struck. Due to the shape of the land, there is an old saying in Isobe that no tsunami could hit here. In disbelief, he watched as a dark wall of water rushed toward him and he was dragged 3km inland by the first wave. His knee broken, a rope caught Hatsumi and he was heaved to safety, unlike five of his family members who were among the 264 who perished. But he can’t fish because the ocean here is too radioactive. He passes his time on the sea catching not fish but rubble and other detritus left by the crushing force of the tsunami.
Iatate, a town directly in the path of the radiation plume but outside of the 20km zone has been evacuated as a high radiation area. However, this was done only after the heaviest radioactive releases from the initial explosions because the government’s computerized radiation early-warning system, set up specifically for this purpose, the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, (SPEEDI) was down as “communication links were disrupted and inoperative due to the earthquakes, and the SPEEDI could not receive the basic source term information of discharged radioactivity.”
While SPEEDI could have provided some crucial data and helped with a swifter evacuation so that people were not exposed to so much radiation, the information it could have given to local officials and the public to plan evacuations never reached them because
“the local NERHQ [Nuclear Emergency Response Head Quarters] lost its functionality, the Government NERHQ or NISA [Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency] should have taken the role of providing the SPEEDI results to the public. But none of them had the idea of making use of this information. MEXT [Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology], the competent ministry for SPEEDI, did not come to realize to providing the SPEEDI information to the public by themselves or through the Government NERHQ.”
As we pass through Iatate on our way back from Soma, the town lies silent and dark. The only lights are from streetlamps and the still occupied old people’s home, housing those too old and vulnerable to be safely moved, cared for by workers on strict shift rotations.
We stop outside the town’s high school. Inside the car, the readings have ranged from 0.14 micro-sieverts/hour to 1.8. We step outside and Yuuki and Hiroyuki bend down to train their Geiger counters on the soil; the displays jump to six micro-sieverts per hour.
Despite the devastation and loss of life caused by the earthquake and tsunami, the people I meet in Fukushima prefecture, rather than talk of the those events, discuss radiation levels and how their land has become polluted with an invisible, enduring danger and made the people fearful as the government tries to convince them that it is safe.
Japan is often portrayed abroad as probably the country most capable and prepared to deal with a nuclear accident. Yet reading the government-ordered Interim Report, I came away with the clear impression that the agencies responsible for emergency planning had made a whole set of false assumptions which led to mistakes that increased the severity of the crisis and people’s exposure to radiation, and there were a series of operational errors at the plant itself as well as communication breakdowns and general lack of planning. It is highly critical of the emergency preparedness, the actions of TEPCO and the improper use of SPEEDI. Along with many other operational and emergency response failings, according to the report NISA staff for example were not even dispatched to TEPCO’s headquarters to gather information in order to report effectively to the prime minister and the country, even though TEPCO is just down the street from METI and NISA offices. In echoes of the preparedness of BP to cope with the Gulf Oil Spill, measures by TEPCO to protect their nuclear plants from tsunamis were only “voluntary”, so off course, being a capitalist entity run in the interests of profit rather than safety, they didn’t take them: “TEPCO did not implement measures against tsunami as part of its AM [Roadmap of Accident Management] strategy. Its preparedness for such accident as severe damage at the core of reactor as a result of natural disasters was quite insufficient.”
In a male-dominated society – only 10% of the Japanese Diet is women, strong female leadership of the movement against the government and nuclear utility, TEPCO, is distinctly noticeable. In one of the many meetings that I attend organized around the radiation and evacuation of children, I spoke with a group of women who have decided to stay for jobs and the stability of their families but who are wracked by anger at the government and frightened of the consequences of their decision to stay.
One woman, who would only give her name as Nihonmatsu, the town she is from, for apprehension of recrimination for continuing to raise the issue of radiation in Fukushima city, has started meetings for people she trusts to talk about their experiences and strategize actions. She shows me her government issued papers and radiation monitor. A long and detailed form, she is daily required to fill out the many boxes with the movements and food intake of her daughter. When complete, she will mail it back to the government for analysis, along with the dosimeter that her daughter is required to keep on her at all times. Nihonmatsu asks, “If it’s so safe here in Fukushima, why did the government give us these?”
A second woman, Jinko Mera, who gives her age as “about 50” nods in agreement, “We always have to think about how much radiation our food has. We want to live free from that. And the healthiest food is from your own region but we can’t dry persimmons, we can’t eat our peaches, we cannot eat our own food.”
At another organizing meeting on Christmas Day, women lead a discussion of the October sit-in outside the ministry of economy, trade and industry, METI which contains the Japanese nuclear regulatory body, NISA.
Amidst speeches and reminiscences, we watch the 1983 documentary Carry Greenham Home, about the 19 year women’s peace camp and occupation of the US nuclear missile base at Greenham Common, England. A new generation of women half a world away are inspired by the songs and collective battle of a different type of anti-nuclear struggle. They want the government to protect them and their families from the immediate nuclear crisis but they also don’t want anyone else to go through what they are enduring. They are part of a new campaign to permanently close down all 54 nuclear reactors and eradicate nuclear power from Japanese shores.
According to a recent report by Greenpeace (Japan) and the Tokyo-based Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, Japan could generate 43% of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020, easily surpassing and making redundant the 30% that is currently provided by nuclear power (though only 6 of the 54 reactors are currently operational). With Japan in radical population decline, set to shrink from 125 million people to 100 million by 2050, the only impediment to a sane and safe energy policy is therefore political.
The meeting of activists ends with emotional intensity and spirit as attendees gather in a circle to hold hands and sing; evocative of another circle all those years ago, when 30,000 women formed a ring around the nine mile perimeter of Greenham Common air base and said, They Shall Not Pass. We sing Furosato, a Japanese song of longing and remembrance:
Someday when I have done what I set out to do,
I will return to where I used to have my home.
Lush a
Mothers Activism
TOKYO (AP) — Japan's nuclear crisis has turned Mizuho Nakayama into one of a small but growing number of Internet-savvy activist moms.
Worried about her 2-year-old son and distrustful of government and TV reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Web for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many using social media for the first time.
The 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant.
"It's the first time for anyone in our group to be involved in this type of activism," said Nakayama, who now carries a Geiger counter with her wherever she goes.
Public dismay with the government's response to this year's triple disaster — earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown — is driving some Japanese to become more politically engaged, helped by social and alternative media. While still fledgling, it's the kind of grass-roots activism that some say Japan needs to shake up a political system that has allowed the country's problems to fester for years.
Nakayama's group has had mixed success: Officials in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward immediately started posting radiation levels in milk, but they say they won't start testing lunch foods until April. Still, Nakayama feels she and others in what she calls the "silent majority" are making a difference.
"Women in their 30s and 40s are busy raising children, and many also work," she said. "We're normally too busy to really raise our voices. But this time we felt compelled to speak up."
Many Japanese have been content to let politicians and bureaucrats run the country as they see fit. Quite a few of the mothers in the newly formed parents groups didn't even vote regularly.
But the handling of the nuclear crisis — perceived as slow, confused and less than forthright, a perception reinforced by a critical government report this week — has deepened distrust of both government and mainstream media. That has given rise to a sense that the government isn't as reliable as once thought, and that people need to take action themselves to get things done.
"People used to think of the government as something like a father figure," said Tatsuya Yoshioka, founder and director of Peace Boat, a volunteer group involved in recovery efforts in the tsunami-hit northeast. "But people are graduating from that. We are moving toward a more active kind of democracy in which people realize they are the primary actors, not the government."
Japan still has a long way to go. The activism is small-scale, and powerful forces — a culture that frowns on nonconformists, an affluent society — stand in the way of lasting change.
In the weeks following the March 11 tsunami, frustration over the sketchy information coming from the government about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant drove many Japanese to Twitter and alternative media webcasts.
OurPlanet-TV, for example, relayed footage two days after the disaster from a freelance reporter near the Fukushima plant who reported the radiation level was quite high, said director Hajime Shiraishi. Within weeks, the number of viewers jumped to more than 100,000 per day from 1,000 to 3,000 before the tsunami, she said. It has since fallen back to the 20,000-30,000 range.
University student Gohei Kogure said he generally trusted TV news before the disaster, but accessing Twitter and webcasts gave him a different perspective that's made him more informed and critical.
Before the crisis there was "too much reliance on the government," he said. "These days, you need to take more responsibility for yourself."
A nationwide network of more than 200 parents groups has popped up to urge authorities to protect children from radiation, said Emiko Itoh, a 48-year-old Tokyo mother who is helping spearhead the movement.
Most are pressing local officials to test radiation levels in school lunches and provide more detailed checks of school grounds, but Itoh and others have also lobbied senior government officials. Mothers make up the bulk of the membership, but fathers are getting involved, too.
"We're still small, but some of the mothers involved didn't even go to vote. It's these mothers who are submitting petitions and making calls and gathering signatures," Itoh said. "I believe this will be a factor in changing the direction of our country."
She said the Internet has been invaluable in connecting parents, partly because Japan has few forums for citizens to exchange ideas. The crisis has changed perceptions of the Internet among mothers, many who previously considered it a dubious source of information.
Separately, individuals and loosely formed community groups are going around their neighborhoods checking radiation levels or sending soil samples to laboratories for testing.
The Radiation Defense Project, which grew out of a blog and then a Facebook page, says its testing has revealed several "hot spots" in Tokyo with trace amounts of radioactive cesium that it believes came from Fukushima, said group founder Kouta Kinoshita, a former TV journalist.
Another group is collecting signatures for a petition to hold a referendum in Osaka and Tokyo on whether Japan should use nuclear power. The vote would not be legally binding but could send a message to policymakers.
The government's management of the nuclear crisis did little to instill confidence that it will be able to tackle looming problems, including a rapidly aging population and a public debt that is twice the nation's GDP — both of which will burden the younger generation.
Still, the growing dissatisfaction may not be enough to bring about fundamental change.
Japan's affluence is an obstacle. Most people live comfortably and are reluctant to make too big a fuss, even if they're unhappy with the political leadership. Culturally, it's considered better to adjust to one's surroundings than to try to change them, said Ken Matsuda, a sociologist at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka.
"Most people aren't hungry or angry," he said. "People need a clear enemy, and there's no clear enemy in Japan. Public anger needs to hit a critical mass. It's not anywhere near that."
Historically, Japan has undergone major change only when it was thrust upon the country from outside — after its defeat in World War II, and after the arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's warships in 1853 essentially forced the country to open up to the rest of the world.
Grass-roots activism has had only limited success. It took nearly 50 years to win compensation for most victims of a chemical plant in Minamata that dumped mercury into the water, causing a rare neurological disorder.
Some Japanese wonder if the stoicism and perseverance that were widely praised in the aftermath of the tsunami could also be a liability. Perhaps we need to be more impatient for change, some say.
"The disasters didn't stimulate a real sense of urgency," said Ichiro Asahina, who quit his job as a bureaucrat in the economic ministry last year after 14 years to establish a think tank and leadership institute in Tokyo.
He faults a risk-averse political culture, a reluctance to take personal responsibility and a diffuse leadership system that spreads out responsibility among too many people or departments.
"To stimulate change," he said, "we may need to confront even more severe crises."
___
Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.
___
Online: http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/
East Japan Officials Need Mental Health Care
Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011 Japan Times
Psychological ailments rise in quake-hit areas
Local officials' requests for sick leave jump 70% from year earlier
Kyodo
The number of local officials who took sick leave to seek mental health care soared 70 percent from April to October in 33 municipalities were seriously damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to a recent survey.
The finding makes it imperative to offer full-fledged mental care to local government officials involved in helping disaster victims, analysts said.
The survey, carried out by Kyodo News, covered all 37 municipalities on the Pacific coastlines of three ravaged prefectures — Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima — in late November and compiled findings for all but the city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate and three other municipalities that lost comparable data to the disasters.
In the 33 municipalities, 289 workers took sick leave on one or more occasions for depression or other mental ailments during the period, up from 170 a year ago, the survey found.
The total included 237 officials who were absent from work for a month or longer during the seven-month period, compared with a total of 240 workers for the whole of fiscal 2010 ended in March.
Although nine months have passed since the calamity, the psychological stress building on local government officials in charge of helping those affected shows no signs of abating.
Nobuyasu Kato, head of the welfare section in the city office of Sendai, which topped the sick leave list with 62 workers, said weekend shifts are taking a toll.
"A large number of officials have to work even on weekends due to an increase in disaster-related work, such as processing applications (from survivors) for tax breaks," Kato said.
Sendai was followed by the city office of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, with 50 officials and Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, with 27.
"Civil service workers in disaster-hit areas, while they are victims themselves, tend to blame themselves for failing to prevent damage from the catastrophe," said Masaharu Maeda, associate professor at Kurume University and head of the Japanese Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Psychologists
Clinical psychologists eyed for national certification
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party are mulling creation of a national certification system for clinical psychologists, reflecting a growing need for psychological therapy amid an increase in suicides and people suffering from depression, sources familiar with the matter said Sunday.
The two parties plan to jointly submit a bill to introduce the system to the ordinary Diet session next year with the aim of increasing the number of counselors by providing them more stable status, the sources said.
There had been discussions on drafting legislation for such a system in 2005, but it was not realized due to opposition from private practice psychiatrists, who may compete with certified clinical psychologists.
The DPJ and the LDP will have to seek acceptance of relevant organizations, including the Japan Medical Association, before submitting the bill to introduce the new system, according to the sources.
The two parties are now proceeding with unofficial consultations on the matter, while calling on other parties, including the New Komeito party, to cooperate, they said.
As of April 1, there were about 22,000 psychologists qualified by the Foundation of the Japanese Certification Board for Clinical Psychologists.
The qualified psychologists include those who handle psychological consultations at hospitals, serve as school counselors and work for mitigating the stress of businesspersons. People affected by the March 11 earthquake--tsunami disaster have been provided care by many of these psychologists.
(Mainichi Japan) December 26, 2011
Psychologists
Clinical psychologists eyed for national certification
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party are mulling creation of a national certification system for clinical psychologists, reflecting a growing need for psychological therapy amid an increase in suicides and people suffering from depression, sources familiar with the matter said Sunday.
The two parties plan to jointly submit a bill to introduce the system to the ordinary Diet session next year with the aim of increasing the number of counselors by providing them more stable status, the sources said.
There had been discussions on drafting legislation for such a system in 2005, but it was not realized due to opposition from private practice psychiatrists, who may compete with certified clinical psychologists.
The DPJ and the LDP will have to seek acceptance of relevant organizations, including the Japan Medical Association, before submitting the bill to introduce the new system, according to the sources.
The two parties are now proceeding with unofficial consultations on the matter, while calling on other parties, including the New Komeito party, to cooperate, they said.
As of April 1, there were about 22,000 psychologists qualified by the Foundation of the Japanese Certification Board for Clinical Psychologists.
The qualified psychologists include those who handle psychological consultations at hospitals, serve as school counselors and work for mitigating the stress of businesspersons. People affected by the March 11 earthquake--tsunami disaster have been provided care by many of these psychologists.
(Mainichi Japan) December 26, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Clinical Psychologists
Monday, Dec. 26, 2011
Certification eyed for psychologists
Kyodo
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the opposition leading Liberal Democratic Party are mulling the creation of a national certification system for clinical psychologists as suicide and depression refuse to abate, sources said Sunday.
The two parties plan to jointly submit a bill to the Diet next year that aimed at increasing the number of mental health counselors by providing them a more stable status, the sources said.
Talks were held on drafting legislation for such a system in 2005, but those were shot down by opposition from private psychiatrists, who apparently view certified clinical psychologists as competition.
The DPJ and the LDP will have to get the backing of relevant groups, including the Japan Medical Association, before submitting the bill, the sources said.
The two parties are holding unofficial consultations on the matter while calling on other parties, including New Komeito, a smaller opposition party, to cooperate, they said.
As of April 1, there were about 22,000 psychologists qualified by the Foundation of the Japanese Certification Board for Clinical Psychologists.
Untitled
Monday, Dec. 26, 2011
Certification eyed for psychologists
Kyodo
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the opposition leading Liberal Democratic Party are mulling the creation of a national certification system for clinical psychologists as suicide and depression refuse to abate, sources said Sunday.
The two parties plan to jointly submit a bill to the Diet next year that aimed at increasing the number of mental health counselors by providing them a more stable status, the sources said.
Talks were held on drafting legislation for such a system in 2005, but those were shot down by opposition from private psychiatrists, who apparently view certified clinical psychologists as competition.
The DPJ and the LDP will have to get the backing of relevant groups, including the Japan Medical Association, before submitting the bill, the sources said.
The two parties are holding unofficial consultations on the matter while calling on other parties, including New Komeito, a smaller opposition party, to cooperate, they said.
As of April 1, there were about 22,000 psychologists qualified by the Foundation of the Japanese Certification Board for Clinical Psychologists.
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