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Provided by: Associated PressMay. 17, 2007 TOKYO (AP) - The number of Japanese who killed themselves because of work jumped by 52 per cent last year, while work-induced mental illness also hit a record high, a health official said Thursday. Compensation paid to the families of workers who committed suicide due to work-related stress was paid out in a record 65 cases in 2006, compared with 42 the previous year, said Health Ministry official Junichiro Kurashige.The number of workers who received compensation for work-induced mental illness hit 205, up 61 per cent from a year earlier, Kurashige said, citing a recent government report. Efforts by the government to encourage workers to apply for compensation were partly behind the rise, said Kurashige.Japan's suicide rate is among the highest in the industrialized world. More than 32,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2004, the bulk of them older Japanese suffering financial woes as the country struggled through a decade of economic s...

Canoe Health Reports ....An Canadian conference is drawing attention to the key role spirituality plays in mental health and even for suicidal patients. Medical schools have started to raise awareness about spirituality, so students entering the health-care field will inquire about their patients' belief systems to better understand their attitudes toward life and death. To shed more light, the University of Ottawa's department of psychiatry, the Ontario Multifaith Council on Spiritual and Religious Care and Saint Paul University are hosting the third annual international conference on Spirituality and Mental Health today and tomorrow. Developing a greater understanding of the link between mental health and spirituality is necessary for health-care workers who truly want to help their patients, said Dr. Andre Gagnon , chairman of the conference organizing committee. The same can be said of workers dealing with suicidal patients. Suicidality has been VIEWED AS AMORAL. Histor...

Psychiatric Times indicates that this disorder is more common than anorexia and bulimia combined, according to a national survey. In DSM- IV this disorder was being reviewed and was indicated to require more research and study to determine if it would be appropriate for admission into the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders). Most physicians, however, aren't aware of the problem, says James Hudson, MD, director of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Program at McLean Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard. "Doctors have a reasonable degree of awareness about anorexia and bulimia, but they're not tuned into binge eating. It's just not as well known," says Hudson, lead author of "The Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication" . The study, published Feb. 1 in Biological Psychiatry, found that 2.8 percent of the general population has binge-eating disorder -- more than b...