Risk factors for psychological distress in the general population of Japan: A nationally representative survey

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Background Psychological distress in the general population in Japan has not been analyzed. This study is the first to examine risk factors for psychological distress in the general population using official statistics available to researchers. Methods The anonymous data of the 2013 National Survey of Living Conditions were used. Binomial logistic analysis was conducted incorporating age, marital status, living arrangements, education, household income, working status, smoking, and drinking as independent variables and the low and high-risk groups for psychological distress (K6 scale) as dependent variables, differentiating by gender. Results The odds ratios (OR)were lower for both genders aged 60 years and older (men, 0.21–0.23; women, 0.28–0.40), while they were higher for respondents of both genders who were unemployed (men, 3.16; women, 3.42). In addition, never-married (1.65), being in the third-highest household income quantile (1.71), doing mainly housework (2.66) and abstainers from alcohol (1.70) among men and having a middle level of education (1.58), receiving the lowest quantile of household income (1.54), and smoking (1.91) among women were risk factors that increased the odds ratios. By contrast, moderate drinker (0.51) and abstainer (0.64) were risk factors that decreased the odds ratio for women. Conclusions For the first time, the risk factors for psychological distress in a general population were identified using nationally representative survey data. Further studies are needed to analyze the above high-risk groups to identify reasonable measures for mental health promotion. We hope this current study will lead to further study in Japan.