The relationship between psychological comfort space and self-esteem in people with mental disorders.

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate a causal model of the sense of having psychological comfortable space that is call 'ibasho' in Japanese and self-esteem in people with mental disorders who had difficulty in social activities. The subjects were 248 schizophrenia patients who were living in the community and receiving day care treatment. Data were collected from December 2007 to April 2009 using the Scale for the Sense of ibasho for persons with mentally ill (SSI) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and analyzed for cross-validation of construct validity by conducting covariance structure analysis. A relationship between the sense of having comfortable space and self-esteem was investigated. Multiple indicator models of the sense of having psychological comfortable space and self-esteem were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Furthermore, the SSI scores were compared between the high- and low-self-esteem groups. The path coefficient from the sense of having comfortable space to self-esteem was significant (0.80). High-self-esteem group scored significantly higher in the SSI subscales, 'the sense of recognizing my true self' and 'the sense of recognizing deep person-to-person relationships' than the low-self-esteem group. It was suggested that in order to help people with mental disorders improve self-esteem, it might be useful to support them in a way they can enhance the sense of having comfortable space.