Biobehavioral Approach in Occupational, Environmental and Community Health : A Report Based on Fourteen-Year Studies

Abstract

Behavioral Medicine has been defined as the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of psychosocial, behavioral and biomedical knowledge relevant to health and illness, and application of this knowledge to prevention, etiology, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation (International Society of Behavioral Medicine, 1990). Behavioral Medicine is a relatively new field with the scope extending from the research efforts to understand fundamental biobehavioral mechanisms to clinical diagnosis, treatment, disease prevention and health promotion. In this report, our own past studies based on biobehavioral and epidemiological approach in occupational, environmental and community health were summarized. The topics were morbidity, mortality and longevity of Japanese population (i.e., peptic ulcer in factory workers, mortality of medical practitioners and of working and nonworking population, and longevity of total Japanese population), suicide mortality (seasonal and secular trends and social life factors), traffic accident (accident-prone drivers and social risk factors), mass psychogenic systemic illness, and work stress (technostress and sociobehavioral, physical and mental effects).J Epidemiol, 1996 ; 6 : S79-S88.