[The Enactment of "the Certified Public Psychologists Act" and the Issues to be Considered].

In this thesis, the historic circumstancs of enactment of and the forthcoming issues related to "the Certified Public Psychologists Act" are reported."The Certified Public Psychologists Act" was established thanks to the united efforts of a great number of the persons concerned, and the Act is scheduled to take effect in September 2017."The Certified Public Psychologist" is an occupational register: it is a qualification without which a person is allowed to deliver relevant services, but not permitted to feign a "Certified Public Psychologist". And since the Certified Public Psychologist is a general qualification, psychologists with the qualification are allowed to work in various fields such as educational area, medical/clinical area, forensic/criminal area, and industrial/occupational area. Mental problems in the modern society arise, in many cases, from various multidimensional factors which are intertwined and mutually related. Psychologists, in offering professional support in actual settings, need to be aware of their accountability that theories and skills are right for the supports. In addition, a sense of balance is required in collaboration, or team approach. It is emphasized that enhancing the systems for training and education is an urgent issue because continuous exertion to improve the compre- hensive capacity as professionals for future is indispensable.

[Basic Principles of Psychotherapy and Integrative Psychotherapy].

There are psychotherapies in a narrow sense that are systematized as a theoretical model and there are also psychotherapies in a wider sense that provide foundations to the former. This paper first discusses that the latter underlies the former and delineates the features of one of such psychotherapies. Recently, the nature of psychological problems has become so complex and diverse with multiple layers of contributing factors interacting with one another that it is necessary to employ an integrative framework that allows idiographic yet multiphasic observation and multi-axial judgment. The paper contrasts this type of integrative psycho- therapy with other more common approaches and then argues that psychotherapy integration needs to go beyond the integration of theoretical models and the eclectic adoption of different techniques and aim for the personal integration of psychotherapists, which will contribute the most to the betterment of psychotherapy.

Nutritional screening with Subjective Global Assessment predicts hospital stay in patients with digestive diseases.

OBJECTIVE: Nutritional status is an important factor that determines hospital stay, and the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) is a candidate tool for nutritional screening on admission. However, the significance of the SGA has not been evaluated well in the ward for digestive diseases. We conducted the present study to test whether the SGA predicts hospital stay of these patients. METHODS: Two hundred sixty-two patients with digestive diseases were consecutively enrolled between July 2004 and April 2005. They consisted of 145 males and 117 females and included 110 patients with cancer. Disease category was gastrointestinal in 94, hepatic in 111, and biliary/pancreatic in 57. The SGA was performed by a certified dietician. Effects of SGA and other nutritional parameters on hospital stay were examined by simple and multiple regression analysis. RESULTS: Among tested variables, simple regression analysis identified the SGA, disease category, presence of malignancy, serum albumin level, percent triceps skinfold thickness, and percent arm muscle circumference as significant predictive parameters for hospital stay. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the SGA had the best predictive power, followed by the presence of malignancy and disease category. CONCLUSION: The SGA is a simple and reliable predictor for hospital stay in patients with digestive diseases.