The health insurance system plays an important role in psychiatric care and affects psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is performed within psychiatric care. The actual state of psychoanalytic psychotherapy under the health insurance system varies from country to country. However, there are few papers discussing psychoanalytic psychotherapy on the health insurance system in Japan. Recently I have discussed psychoanalytic psychotherapy and health insurance system in Japan in the context of the association with evidencebased practice. In this review, various challenges currently facing psychoanalytic psychotherapy in health insurance system in Japan were discussed from four main perspectives as follows.
a) Practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the health insurance system
b) Training of psychoanalytic practitioners in psychiatric care
c) Evidence-based psychoanalytic psychotherapy
d) Access to psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Akiyoshi Okada