Effects of Repeated Kurort Health Walking on Blood Pressure and Mental Health.

Background: The German word "kurort" means cure (kur) and area (ort), whereby a patient's health improves through walking in areas full of nature. A single session of kurort health walking (kurort) decreased high blood pressure and improved mental health. However, its continuing effect with repeat sessions remains unclear.

Health Walking Preferentially Decreases Higher Blood Pressure and Improves Mood.

is a German term from the words (cure) and (area), and refers to improvements in patients' health in areas full of nature. We investigated the effect of health walking in the 2 urban-style health walking courses opened in Gifu City on systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate, and mood. The subjects were 454 people (136 males, 318 females; mean [±SD] age 61.

Gambling symptoms, behaviors, and cognitive distortions in Japanese university students.

Background: This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between symptoms of gambling problems, gambling behaviours, and cognitive distortions among a university student population in Japan ages 20 to 29 years. We aimed to address the gap in knowledge of gambling disorders and treatment for this population.

Methods: Data were obtained from 1471 Japanese undergraduate students from 19 universities in Japan.

Effect of a group intervention for children and their parents who have cancer.

Objective: Although support programs for children whose parents have cancer have been described and evaluated, formal research has not been conducted to document outcomes. We adapted a group intervention called CLIMB®, originally developed in the United States, and implemented it in Tokyo, Japan, for school-aged children and their parents with cancer. The purpose of this exploratory pilot study was to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of the Japanese version of the CLIMB® Program on children's stress and parents' quality of life and psychosocial distress.

A national profile of the impact of parental cancer on their children in Japan.

Objective: Dependent children under the age of 18 are particularly vulnerable to the stress of parental death from cancer or of having a parent diagnosed and treated for the disease. More and more Japanese couples are postponing parenthood, which increases their chances of developing cancer while they still have a dependent child. However, the problem has not received enough attention from healthcare professionals and policy-makers because the extent and breadth of the problem has never been examined in the Japanese population.