A Comparative Study of Job-Related Stress in Long-Term Care Workers in Japan and China

Japan revised and implemented the Occupational Safety and Health Act in December 2015 to mandate that businesses with 50 or more workers have all of their workers tested for stress annually. In China, one effect of the “one child policy” and the nuclearization of the family has been that the number of children has decreased, while the number of elderly people living alone continues to grow. This growth is increasing the demand for long-term care workers. However, because the aging of the Chinese population has been more rapid than in Japan, and China has yet to develop a long-term care system to cope with the aging of its population, the burden on long-term care staff appears to be increasing. Although the resulting need for more support for long-term care staff has become an issue, China has yet to develop a mental health policy like that of Japan that mandates the monitoring of mental health, for example, through annual testing of workers for stress. As a result, the factors underlying long-term care worker stress have yet to be identified.This study attempted to discover, through a comparison of long-term care worker stress in Japan and China, the kinds of job-related stress care workers tended to have and what the principal underlying factors resulting in high levels of stress may be in each country. To that end, data were collected on workers' psychological and physical stress using the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ) and analyzed to find out how stress may differ by country, gender, job responsibilities, having to work night shifts, or having certain qualifications.