The mental health of Japanese male registered nurses.

With great interest, we read the article by Kudo and colleagues in J Rural Med (Oct 2021) on the predictors associated with the mental health of Japanese male registered nurses1). We would like to hear the authors’ comments regarding the following three points. First, we were strongly impressed by the results that the very high percentage of male nurses who were considered to be in ‘poor mental health condition’ was at 40.1%. In the study, the authors treated a GHQ-12 score of 4 or higher [GHQ-12 ≥ 4] as having poor mental health. The GHQ-12 has been used in surveys of patients who visited the internal medicine department2) and in those of young males3). In addition, there have been some reports of the mental health evaluation in nurses using the cutoff value of GHQ-12 ≥ 44, 5). In a study by Ikeda et al., the GHQ-12 ≥ 4 in newly graduated nurses was 25%4). Bazazan et al. reported that the percentage of psychological distress [GHQ-12 ≥ 4] was 29.1%5). We would like to hear from the authors on the appropriateness of this cutoff value in studies of mental stress in nurses. Second, the authors concluded that female registered nurses must recognize that their attitudes toward male registered nurses influence the mental health of male registered nurses. Please let us know how to communicate these results from female registered nurses and how to share the information obtained in this study. Specifically, we would like to know the authors’ concepts regarding who are responsible for the organizational activities and how they work.