• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.171-179
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• 2018

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the mental health and presenteeism of early childhood teachers and to explore the effects of working conditions and job satisfaction on these. Methods: Data from the 4thKorean Work Environment Survey were used. The sample consisted of 474 female early-childhood teachers from private facilities. Mental health was measured using the WHO-Wellbeing Index. Presenteeism was attributed to a participant upon indication that, during the past 12 months, she had ever attended work, despite being sick. The data by complex sample design were analyzed through the Rao-Scott $x^2$ test and logistic regression analysis. Results: 37.9% of early childhood teachers reported poor mental health and 34.2% had experienced presenteeism. Early childhood teachers in permanent employment, who did not work evening shifts, and with sustainable jobs, were more likely to have better mental health. Moreover, those in permanent employment and remunerated appropriately were less likely to experience presenteeism. Conclusion: Type of employment, number of days working in the evening, and job sustainability affect mental health. Further, type of employment, number of workers, and being well paid have an effect on presenteeism. We suggest that improved working conditions should precede the improvement of early-childhood teachers' mental health.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.108-117
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between customer contact service and mental health among Korean taxi drivers. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of data collected from the 2015 Korean Working Conditions Survey. The sample included 496 taxi drivers in South Korea. The effect of customer contact service on mental health was analyzed using logistic regression analysis. The independent variables were general characteristics, working conditions, and hazardous factors in interactive service. Results: The prevalence of poor mental health was 56.3%. Taxi drivers experienced emotional involvement (17.2%), hiding feeling (32.0%), and contact with angry clients (18.3%) in their job. During the first month of their work, 33.7% experienced verbal abuse and 12.3% threats/humiliating behaviors. In bivariate analysis, verbal abuse, threats/humiliating behaviors, and physical violence were associated with mental health of taxi drivers. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed 'emotional involvement' and 'contact with angry clients' were significant predictors of mental health. Conclusion: The findings of this study may be useful in developing intervention programs to improve the mental health of taxi drivers in South Korea.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.114-121
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the psychosocial work environment of hospital nurses to identify influences of psychosocial work environment on stress, depression, sleep disorder, and burnout. Methods: A total of 219 nurses working in one hospital were surveyed by using the Korean version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ-K) mental health and psychosocial work environment. The impact of the psychosocial work environment on mental health was analyzed using multiple regression. Results: Mental health variables are correlated with each other. The psychosocial work environment variables and mental health variables are mostly correlated. To assess the psychosocial work environment that affects mental health the most, multiple regression was used. Work-family conflict was the most powerful explanation of all the mental health variables. Work pace, social community at work, mutual trust among employees, predictability, and influence were found to be affecting some mental health variables. Conclusion: To improve the mental health of nurses, it is necessary to consider work pace, social community at work, mutual trust among employees, predictability, influence focus on work-family conflict.

• Psychiatry investigation
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.1030-1036
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• 2018

Objective In this study, we aimed to develop a model predicting individuals with suicide ideation within a general population using a machine learning algorithm. Methods Among 35,116 individuals aged over 19 years from the Korea National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey, we selected 11,628 individuals via random down-sampling. This included 5,814 suicide ideators and the same number of non-suicide ideators. We randomly assigned the subjects to a training set (n=10,466) and a test set (n=1,162). In the training set, a random forest model was trained with 15 features selected with recursive feature elimination via 10-fold cross validation. Subsequently, the fitted model was used to predict suicide ideators in the test set and among the total of 35,116 subjects. All analyses were conducted in R. Results The prediction model achieved a good performance [area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC)=0.85] in the test set and predicted suicide ideators among the total samples with an accuracy of 0.821, sensitivity of 0.836, and specificity of 0.807. Conclusion This study shows the possibility that a machine learning approach can enable screening for suicide risk in the general population. Further work is warranted to increase the accuracy of prediction.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.251-259
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate of mental health professionals regarding job burnout, emotional labor and mental health by verifying the moderating effect of resilience. Results from analyzing 1,020 mental health professionals(certified people with 1st, 2nd grade licence in nursing, social welfare, and psychology) collected in the academic service studies by the National Mental Health Education Research Center in 2014 showed that job burnouts and emotional labor both had negative correlation with mental health, but in cases of analyzing moderating effects in resilience, only job burnout presented significant results. Accordingly, the results indicated that resilience could buffer the danger of mental health of mental health workers from job burnouts and emotional laboring. This study shows that it is important to care about the mental health of not only the people who receive mental health care services, but also the mental health care professionals who provide services. It also shows that the research has to be conducted with convergence considering both sides. Measures regarding the mental health care of mental health professionals were further discussed based on the results of this study.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.129-139
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• 2009

Objectives : This study evaluated the effectiveness of school-based mental health screening and treatment linkage programs, focusing on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and adolescent depression. Methods : All 11,158 children and adolescents aged 8-14 years in Seoul received a school-based mental health screening, consisting of the Korean versions of the ADHD rating scale and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), for ADHD, and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-DS) and the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior (SIQ-JR), for depression. The high-risk children's and adolescents' diagnoses were confirmed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-IV (DISC-IV). Treatment linkage programs were managed by the Seoul Metropolitan Community Mental Health Center (Program 1), the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (Program 2), or the Dongjak District Office of Education (Program 3). We estimated and compared the referral rates of the three programs. Results : Program 1 screened and referred 22.9% of ADHD youths to mental health services, Program 2, 68.8%, and Program 3, 40.0%. Program 1 screened and referred 22.8% of depressed youths to mental health services, Program 2, 53.8%, and Program 3, 88.9%. Key elements for successful screening and referral programs were an effective school/community mental health center/Office of Education network, the parents' financial support and perception of their child's mental health status as being problematic, and the teachers' active engagement. Conclusion : This is the first study investigating the effectiveness of school-based mental health screenings' linkage to treatment for primary and middle school students in Korea. An effective network for community mental health and improvements in parents' and teachers' perceptions regarding mental health are needed for more successful treatment linkage.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.277-311
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• 2010

The powerful association between poverty and mental health has been recognized for many decades in the Western Countries. Despite growing poverty studies, there has been little attention to the association between poverty and mental health in Korea. In this article we examine the effects of the mental health on the poverty status transition. In this study we draw on nationally representative data from the The Korean Welfare Panel Study, to estimate the effects of depression and self-respects on the poverty status transition. Major findings are as follows. First, we find that there are mental health disparities between poor and non-poor classes. The mental health conditions of the poor are worse than the non-poor. Second, we find the strong correlations between the mental health and poverty status transition. Whether poor family exits poverty or not depends on the household head's mental health. Third, poverty experiences are different depending on the mental health conditions. To the mental ill-health family, the probabilities of poverty-exit are much lower and poverty duration is more long. Fourth, we find that family poverty status transitions are very significantly related with household head's mental health from the logistic model analysis. These findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between poor mental health and the experience of poverty in Korea. They also suggest that intervention programs to enhance the mental health of the poor are needed in order to reduce the poverty problem in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.539-558
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among university students' self-differentiation, self-esteem and mental health. The subjects were 400 students of four universities in Busan and Gyungnam area. A questionnaire survey was done. The results of this study are as follows : First, the levels of university students' self-differentiation and self-esteem were high. Second, university students' self-differentiation and self-esteem were correlated positively. Third, the levels of university students' depression and anxiety were relatively low. It showed that the subjects' mental health of this study were not bad. Fourth, depression had no significant difference by gender. However, female students had higher anxiety than male students had. Fifth, university students' self-differentiation and self-esteem had negative correlation with depression and anxiety, and self-esteem played a role of mediating variable between self-differentiation and mental health. Sixth, family projection, family regression and self integration of self-differentiation had indirect influence upon the students' mental health through self-esteem, while cognitive-emotional function had direct influence upon mental health and had indirect influence upon mental health through self-esteem as well. In this study, university students' self-differentiation and self-esteem were found to be important variables having influence upon mental health, and self-differentiation had indirect influence upon mental health through self-esteem. Counselling intervention strategies should be established considering self-differentiation and self-esteem of the students who complained about their maladjusted emotion and human relation problems at schools. Also, programs enhancing self-differentiation and self-esteem of university students should be developed and the execution of these programs will be needed to help the university students who experienced mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and so on.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.62-71
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• 2015

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate North Korean refugees' knowledge of mental illnesses and treatments and analyze the factors affecting this knowledge. Methods: Subjects were selected via a snowball sampling method, and the survey outcomes of 152 North Korean refugee participants were analyzed. The factors affecting knowledge of mental illnesses were analyzed via a regression analysis by constructing a multivariate model with mental illness knowledge score as the dependent variable. Results: The North Korean refugees' mental illness scores ranged from 3 to 24 points, with an average score of 13.0. Regarding the factors that influence mental illness knowledge, the subjects with South Korean spouses and those who had spent more time in South Korea had higher knowledge scores. Furthermore, the subjects who considered the mental health of North Korean refugees to be a serious issue revealed lower knowledge scores than those who did not believe it was a serious issue. The subjects who visit psychiatric clinics showed higher knowledge scores than those who do not. The South Korean subjects who had at least a college education exhibited higher scores than did those without advanced education. The subjects who are satisfied with life in South Korea manifested a higher mental illness knowledge score than those who are not. Conclusions: This study is significant as being the first study to ever measure and evaluate the level of North Korean refugees' knowledge of mental illnesses. In addition, the evaluations of North Korean refugees' mental illness knowledge and influencing factors while residing in South Korea created basic data that formed the foundation of an effort to enhance mental health literacy and provide proper mental health services. The results of this study can be utilized to solve mental health problems that might frequently occur during the unification process of North and South Korea in the future.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.135-147
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• 2012

The purposes of this study were to uncover the relationships and correlations between mental health, resilience and happiness. The sample consisted of 184 intermarried Korean men. The data were analyzed by means of frequency, Pearson's correlation, and multiple regression analysis using SPSS. The major findings were as follows; Mental health was negatively correlated with resilience and happiness, except for the component of negative emotion. Additionally, resilience was positively correlated with feelings of happiness and positive emotion. Second, social maladaptation and depression had a negative influence on resilience and a negative influence on happiness. Resilience had a mediating effect on mental health and feelings of happiness. Resilience had a mediating effect on mental health and positive emotion, while resilience had a mediating effect on mental health and negative emotion. In conclusion, in order to improve happiness it is important to mediate on intermarried Korean men's resilience through special education programs and counseling.