Decline in the severity or the incidence of schizophrenia in Japan: A survey of university students.

Clinical manifestations of schizophrenia are believed to be becoming less severe in Japan, but little evidence supports this theory. We investigated the percentages of undergraduate students attending national universities in Japan who required temporary leave and who dropped out because of schizophrenia in the academic years 1986-1987, 1994-1995, and 2013-2014. The percentages of students who required temporary leave and those who dropped out because of schizophrenia significantly decreased over time. The severity of clinical manifestations of schizophrenia may have decreased, enabling more students with schizophrenia to continue their study, or the incidence of schizophrenia might have declined.

Presenteeism in college students: reliability and validity of the Presenteeism Scale for Students.

OBJECTIVE: Presenteeism is the impaired work performance due to health problems. We aimed to develop a Presenteeism Scale for Students (PSS), and to reveal the existence of presenteeism among students. METHODS: Students (n = 5,701) in 4 national universities in Japan were recruited via the school-based health examination. Moreover, 122 students participated in a 2-week interval test-retest to examine the reliability and criterion-related validity of the PSS. RESULTS: Of the students, 59.2% indicated some health problems. Allergy was most prevalent health problems, affecting 35.7% of the whole students. Students with emotional problems had higher degree of presenteeism than those with the other problems. The Cronbach's α of the work impairment score of the PSS was 0.90. The Spearman's coefficient for the test-retest score was 0.80 (P < 0.001). Regarding criterion-related validity, Spearman's coefficient between the work impairment score of the PSS and summary score of the SF-36 was -0.60 (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the PSS can be expected to be useful for assessment of students with presenteeism. Furthermore, we found that the majority of students have some health problems, and proposed that the issue of presenteeism on campus should be addressed.