• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of secondhand smoke on depression and suicidal ideation in adolescents. Methods: The study used the raw data of the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (2018). Age, academic achievement, living with family, economic status, and stress were adjusted and the relationship between secondhand smoke and depression and suicidal thoughts was analyzed by gender. Results: The results showed that secondhand smoke had a significant effect on mental health of adolescents. Male students who experienced secondhand smoke at school and at public places had 1.41 times and 1.37 times higher depression rates, respectively. Female students who experienced secondhand smoke at home, school, and public places had 1.27 times, 1.35 times, and 1.39 times higher depression rates, respectively. Suicidal thoughts were 1.17 times and 1.22 times higher among male students who experienced secondhand smoke at school and at public places. Female students who experienced secondhand smoke at home, school, and public places had 1.12 times, 1.08 times, and 1.21 times more suicidal thoughts. Conclusion: Secondhand smoke has a significant effect on adolescent depression and suicidal thoughts. Therefore, efforts should be made to have institutional changes and increased awareness across the country, such as homes, schools, and communities, to prevent exposure to secondhand smoke.

• Korean Circulation Journal
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.659-679
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• 2022

Efforts to improve end-of-life (EOL) care have generally been focused on cancer patients, but high-quality EOL care is also important for patients with other serious medical illnesses including heart failure (HF). Recent HF guidelines offer more clinical considerations for palliative care including EOL care than ever before. Because HF patients can experience rapid, unexpected clinical deterioration or sudden death throughout the disease trajectory, choosing an appropriate time to discuss issues such as advance directives or hospice can be challenging in real clinical situations. Therefore, EOL issues should be discussed early. Conversations are important for understanding patient and family expectations and developing mutually agreed goals of care. In particular, high-quality communication with patient and family through a multidisciplinary team is necessary to define patient-centered goals of care and establish treatment based on goals. Control of symptoms such as dyspnea, pain, anxiety/depression, fatigue, nausea, anorexia, and altered mental status throughout the dying process is an important issue that is often overlooked. When quality-of-life outweighs expanding quantity-of-life, the transition to EOL care should be considered. Advanced care planning including resuscitation (i.e., do-not resuscitate order), device deactivation, site for last days and bereavement support for the family should focus on ensuring a good death and be reviewed regularly. It is essential to ensure that treatment for all HF patients incorporates discussions about the overall goals of care and individual patient preferences at both the EOL and sudden changes in health status. In this review, we focus on EOL care for end-stage HF patients.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.147-150
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• 2012

Acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE) may be suspected when a young child presents with abrupt onset of altered mental status, seizures, or both. Definitive clinical diagnosis is based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results. ANE is associated with influenza virus infections. Preliminary data suggests that up to 25% of ANE patients die, and up to 25% of ANE survivors develop substantial neurologic sequelae. Here, we describe a case of a comatose 22-month-old girl who was admitted to our hospital because of febrile illness and seizures. On day 13 of her illness, she died from ANE associated with infection from parainfluenza virus. Brain MRI results indicated diffuse bilateral symmetric signal changes in both basal ganglia, thalami, periventricular white matter, pons, and cerebral white matter, as well as generalized swelling of the brain.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.27-38
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• 2013

Healthcare providers in Korea are using conservative pharmacological treatment for Alzheimer's disease (AD) to delay the progress of the disease or to mitigate its behavioral and neurological symptoms. However, there is a growing need for interventions using practical non-pharmacologic treatment, as the effects of pharmacological treatments has faced limitations. This research provided a cognitive rehabilitation program to 3 AD patients and used a multiple baseline design across subjects to examine the effects. Performing reality orientation therapy (ROT) for 1 cycle (4 weeks) resulted in a slight increase in accuracy and responsiveness on an orientation task, mainly with patients with mild cases of AD. Also, in the sub-domain of the Korean-Mini Mental Status Examination performed to examine changes in cognitive ability, there were minimal changes in place orientation. In functional communication, however, there were no significant differences before and after the intervention. In conclusion, we found that ROT was an effective intervention for improving accuracy and responsiveness in the orientation of patients with mild cases of AD. In future studies, the effect of non-pharmacological interventions can be evaluated more reliably by examining the interaction effects of sample size, length of the intervention, outcome measurements, and pharmacological intervention.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.605-618
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• 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a swallowing rehabilitation program for elderly on the stage of dysphagia, nutritional status, and swallowing-quality of life. Methods: The research design was Pretest-Posttest Nonequivalent Groups Design. The subjects of this study consisted of 85 elderly patients hospitalized at geriatric hospitals between August 23rd and October 25th in 2012. Eighty five research subjects were assigned to experimental (42 patients) and control (43 patients) groups. The rehabilitation program was provided to the experimental group 5 days per week for 8 weeks. The effects were evaluated by measurement of Mid-upper Arm Muscle Circumference (MAMC), Total Lymphocyte Counts, albumin, Total Cholesterol, and Swallowing Quality of Life (SWAL-QOL). The collected data were analyzed with x2-test and independent t-test using PASW WIN 18.0. Results: Changes in the stage of dysphagia were not significant (p>.05). In nutrition status, the degree of MAMC points in the experimental group was significantly increased compared with that in the control group (t=2.36, p=.021). In swallowing quality of life, the score of SWAL-QOL in the experimental group was significantly increased, particularly burden (t=3.34, p=.002), frequency (t=2.68, p=.011), fear (t=2.44, p=.019), mental health (t=2.47, p=.018), and sleep (t=2.08, p=.044). Conclusion: Based on the results, this swallowing rehabilitation program for elderly would be helpful in promoting their nutritional status and swallowing-QOL in geriatric hospitals.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.466-472
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• 2011

Hazardous chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and heavy metals, are known as being harmful to human health were included in oils released by the Herbei Spirit Oil Spill accident in December 2007. To investigate changes of eating habits by the exposure to harmful substances, we conducted 5 focus group interviews for residents at Taean coast areas, who had experienced the oil spill accident. Participants included 46 women (mean age: $57.2{\pm}10.9$) who were mainly responsible for preparing family meals. Focus group discussions were audio-taped, transcribed and categorized by themes. Participants expressed more frequent illness symptoms such as dizziness, vomiting, visual loss, and skin diseases after the accident. They mentioned that their worries about economic hardship and worsened health status since the accident induced mental problems, such as depression about their children. Regarding eating habits, participants reported less intakes of fishes and meats and relatively more intakes of vegetables and kimchi due to the lack of household incomes after the accident. Although the participants had been used to collecting or catching fish or shellfish for their consumption previously, they mainly purchased these foods from local markets after the accident. Changes of eating habits induced by the accident included drinking boiled water and having steamed or fried seafood rather than raw seafood. Changes of food intakes occurred less frequently in older adults due to their longterm fixed eating habits, although they felt uncomfortable for having raw fish. The findings of this study clearly present that the exposure of hazardous substances by the oil spill accident had a significant impact on changes in eating habits besides economic, physical, and mental problems among the residents in Taean. Continuous health and nutrition monitoring and support are needed.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.75-82
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• 2022

This study aimed to firstly, understand how adolescents' mental, physical, sentimental, and health status and daily life have changed due to drastic environmental changes resulted from spending more time at home and taking online classes as a part of social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic and secondly, identify how such changes influenced their subjective happiness. In conclusion, this study provided theoretical and practical discussion and implications for adolescents' happiness in disaster situation based on adolescent happiness influence factors.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.148-158
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• 2011

Objectives The eye movement (EM) has been reported to play a role in enhancing the retrieval of episodic memories and reducing effects of fearful episodes in the past and worries for the futures. However, it is still unclear in the mechanism of EM in normal subjects. We examined the horizontal eye movement (HEM) effect using an aiding apparatus on mental health indices including negative and positive psychological factors, and psychophysiological measures such as heart rate variability and quantitative electroencepaholography (qEEG) in healthy subjects. Methods Twenty eight healthy subjects were recruited and randomly allocated into two groups : active HEM group and control group. The active HEM group conducted the HEM training with usual stress management audio-intervention using the apparatus inducing eye movement once a day for 14 days. The control group also conducted the same training once a day for 14 days, however, the saccadic eye movement was not included in this training. Psychological measurements, neurocognitive function tests, heart rate variability measurement and qEEG were conducted before and after the training in both groups. Results In the active HEM group, sleep status using Sleep Quality Scale (SQS) positive factors significantly increased after the training. By contrast, scores on the negative items of Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS), and negative items of the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) were significantly decreased after the training. The percentage of delta amplitude (1-3 Hz) in qEEG significantly decreased after the HEM training. The percentage of alpha amplitude (8-12 Hz) significantly increased after HEM training. The change of delta amplitude in the active HEM group was positively correlated with the change of sleep satisfaction of Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and the change of alpha amplitude was negatively correlated with depression of VAS, anxiety of VAS and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Conclusions The HEM training improved sleep quality and well-being, and sense of optimism. The HEM training also increased alpha amplitude and decreased delta amplitude in qEEG. The qEEG changes were well correlated with subjective improvement of mental health indices in healthy subjects. These results suggest some evidences that HEM training using the apparatus that induces EM would be helpful in improving subjective mental health in healthy subjects. Further study with larger samples size would be needed.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.475-487
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• 2011

Objectives : The growing elderly population and social changes have fueled a rapid increase in demand for elderly care facilities, but health care services for the elderly, especially oral health services, have long been overlooked. The purpose of this study was to examine the oral health care of elderly residents in elderly care facilities in an effort to provide some information on the elderly's oral health care and the development of dental care programs geared toward institutionalized elderly people. Methods : The subjects in this study were 230 elderly people who were in elderly care facilities in Jeolla Province. An individual interview was held, and they got a dental checkup. As for data analysis, t-test and ANOVA were utilized, and Scheffe post-hoc test was employed. Results : 1. In relation to the subfactors of the quality of life related to oral health, the elderly people investigated got a mean of 4.58, 4.47, 4.38, 4.09, 3.94, 3.91 and 3.76 respectively in activity disorder, mental disorder, social disorder, mental inconvenience, functional disorder, physical pain and physical disorder. 2. Concerning the overall quality of life related to oral health, there were statistically significant gaps in this aspect according to gender, age, presence or absence of systemic disorder, presence or absence of eating difficulties, subjective health status, subjective oral health state and oral health concern. 3. The presence or absence of root caries had a significant relationship to physical pain and social disorder among the subfactors of the OHIP-14, but that had nothing to do with functional disorder, mental inconvenience, physical disorder, mental disorder and activity disorder. Conclusions : The oral health indexes of the institutionalized elderly people in Jeolla Province were measured, and what factors affected the subfactors of oral health was checked. As a result, there appeared a close relation ship between oral health and the quality of life. Therefore effective oral health plans that cater to the elderly should be carried out to improve elderly people's quality of life related to oral health who stay in long-term elderly care facilities. In the future, prolonged research should be implemented from diverse angles for the sake of institutionalized elderly people.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.123-131
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• 2017

Objective : The PTSD Checklist (PCL) is a self-report screen for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that can be scored for both diagnostic assessment and symptom severity measurement. The most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) contains a number of changes to the definition of PTSD, and the aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Korean version of the PCL for the DSM-5 (PCL-5-K). Methods : The participants were 204 Korean veterans of the Vietnam War who completed the PCL-5-K, the Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE), PTSD module of Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5, Research Version (SCID5-RV PTSD module), Korean version of Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R-K) and Combat Exposure Scale (CES-K). Results : The PCL-5-K demonstrated good internal consistency (${\alpha}=0.972$) and test-retest reliability (r=0.96); the suggested cut-off score for PTSD diagnosis was ${\geq}37$ with 0.88 sensitivity and 0.96 specificity. The PCL-5-K scale correlated highly with the IES-R-K and CES-K. Factor analysis identified only one factor. Conclusion : Among elderly Korean veterans of the Vietnam War, the PCL-5-K demonstrated similar psychometric qualities to those of both the original PCL and subsequent versions. It is expected that the PCL-5-K will be a useful PTSD screening tool.