• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.169-176
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• 2020

Exploring the risk factors of adolescent suicide is important for effective suicide prevention. This study explored the clustering of adolescent suicides based on six risk factors: mental disorder, broken family, depression, anxiety, previous suicide attempts, and deviant behaviors. Using 173 student suicide reports obtained from the Ministry of Education, we evaluated the associations between suicide and variables related to mental disorders; dysfunctional family life; depression and anxiety; previous suicide attempts; deviant behaviors such as drinking and smoking; and school life characteristics, including attendance and discipline, problems within the past year, and incidents prior to suicide. In addition, reports of warning signs just before suicide were included in the analysis. The two-stage cluster analysis classified the students into three clusters: the silent type (cluster 1; 48.55%), in which no risk factors were observed; environmental-risk type (cluster 2: 24.28%), which featured a high frequency of broken households, deviant behaviors such as smoking/drinking and running away from home; and depressive type (cluster 3: 27.17%), which featured a high frequency of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts. Identifying the sub-types of adolescent suicide may help to inform tailored suicide prevention and intervention strategies in school.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.140-147
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to improve the empathy, communication efficacy, and communication skills of nursing students through a psychiatric nursing practice program using storytelling by allowing the students to immerse in the narratives and identify themselves with the main characters with mental illness. This study is a single group pretest-posttest design that applied psychological nursing practice using storytelling to 46 nursing students from a local university in Korea and evaluated its effectiveness. Data analysis was performed by a paired t-test to compare the effects of the participants' empathy, communication self-efficacy, and therapeutic communication ability using SPSS 21.0 program. The results showed that psychiatric nursing practice using storytelling had an effect on the empathy (t=3.565, p=.001) and communication self-efficacy (t=2.320, p=.025) of nursing students. Based on these results, psychiatric and mental health clinical practice curriculums should be developed to improve nursing students' understanding of mental disorders and develop their communication ability with patients.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.115-118
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• 2010

Objective : The purpose of this study was to survey the degree to which people use the Internet prior to joining the army and mental health. Methods : The author assessed Internet addiction and mental health using an Internet addiction diagnostic scale for soldiers and the Symptoms Check-list-90. A total of 508 subjects were included in the final analysis. Collected data were analyzed by independent t-test. Results : The Internet addiction risk group (n=19, 3.7%) had significantly higher mean scores for obsessive-compulsion (t=-2.43, p=0.02) and interpersonal-sensitivity subscales (t=-2.30, p=0.03) than the control group. Conclusion : Internet addiction was related to soldiers' mental health. An assessment focused on internet use would be useful in the evaluation of a person potential adaptation to the military.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.660-662
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• 2022

Due to the prolonged aftermath of COVID-19, the number of modern people suffering from stress and mental illness is increasing. Recently, various methods of color therapy are being studied using LED lighting to improve concentration, relieve stress, manage skin, and improve sleep quality. In this paper, pulse waves are measured and heart rate variability is extracted using a PPG (Photoplethysmogram) sensor to analyze a person's mental and physical state. Using RGBLED and Arduino, we propose a mood lighting system that automatically changes colors according to changes in mental and physical conditions by producing color lighting of various wavelengths, which are mainly used to stabilize the mental state.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2021

Objectives Despite growing attention to anxiety in bipolar disorder (BD), little research has assessed anxiety symptoms in the course of BD. The current prospective follow-up study examines the influence of subjectively and objectively measured anxiety symptoms on the course of BD. Methods A total of 49 patients with BD were followed-up prospectively for average of one year at an average of four months interval. The Korean version of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (K-BAI), the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, heart rate variability (HRV) were used to measure anxiety subjectively, objectively and physiologically. Participants were divided into high and low anxiety groups based on their K-BAI scores. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was performed to compare the recurrence of mood episode, suicide attempt, emergency room visit, and psychiatric hospitalization between two groups. Mediators were investigated with Cox proportional hazards models. Results Compared to the low anxiety group, the high anxiety group reported significantly higher impulsiveness (p = 0.016) and lower high frequency component on HRV (p = 0.007) after controlling for severity of BD. Regarding survival analysis, the high anxiety group showed hastened depressive episode recurrence (p = 0.048) and suicidal ideation was the mediator of the hazard ratio (HR) 1.089 (p = 0.029) in the Cox model. Moreover, the high anxiety group showed a tendency of accelerated suicide attempt (p = 0.12) and impulsivity was the risk factor of suicide attempt (HR = 1.089, p = 0.036). Conclusions This interim analysis of prospective study suggests that high anxiety level in BD may anticipate unfavorable course. Further studies are needed to understand the multifactorial mechanism of anxious bipolar patients.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.36-42
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• 1997

Higher cognitive functions refer to the highest level of human intellectual functioning, including concept formation, reasoning, and executive functions. The executive functions can be conceptualized as having four components : volition, planning, purposive action, and effective performance. Because higher cognitive functions represent the most advanced stages of intellectual development, they are often highly susceptible to the effects of brain injuries and mental disorders. The ability to perform effectively within the environment is determined in large part by an individual's adequacy in performing such higher-order functions. Especially executive functions are necessary for appropriate, socially responsible, and effectively self-serving adult conduct. Threfore, an assessment of the psychiatric patient's performance in these areas will provide useful diagnostic information, as well as information concerning social and vocational prognosis.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.19-23
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• 1997

Attention is a phenomenon hard to define, but can be conceptualized as a mental function ranging from sustaining readiness to perceive stimuli to understanding the nature and value and selecting stimuli that are most relevant to the given situation. Manifestations of attention include vigilance, and focused, directed, selective, divided, and sustained attentions. While basic attentional tone is controlled by the interaction among reticular activating system, thalamus and prefrontal cortex, direction and selection of attention is controlled by neural circuits of prefrontal, posterior parietal, and limbic cortex. It is expected that understanding of attention and its neural control could provide answers to the relationship between pathophysiology and clinical symptoms of some major psychiatric disorders. More efforts are required to develop tools to assess more detailed and various aspects of attention in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.3-11
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• 1997

Disturbances in memory are the most common problem in patients with an organic mental syndrome. Other patients with significant psychiatric disorders also often have difficulty with memory. So it is very important in the clinical practice of psychiatry to understand the biological and neurocognitive mechanisms of memory proessing, and to develop the assessment tools with which memory function can be evaluated reliably and validly. Moreover, memory researches provide an important viewpoint from which we can understand the pathophysiological mechanisms of major neuropsychiatric illnesses. This article focuses on our understanding of memory functions in clinical and neurobiological aspects. The relevant material will be presented in four parts : 1) terminologies needed in defining major stages of various types of memory processing : 2) neurochemical and neuroanatomical basis of memory processing : 3) brief bed-side screening tests and more comprehensive neuropsychological tests for the evaluation of memory function : 4) the characteristics of memory dysfunction in several major psychiatric illnesses.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.87-92
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• 2005

Cytokines are the main regulatory molecules of not only immune system but also sleep system. Research on the role of cytokines on sleep has greatly been expanding since the first report of sleep-promoting effects of interleukin-1, the first cytokine molecule. Interleukin-1 and tumor necrosis factor are most widely studied among various cytokines. Studies over about twenty years demonstrate that most cytokines promote sleep but several cytokines inhibit sleep. Slow wave sleep is the main part that cytokines have effects on. Besides normal sleep physiology, cytokines have more major roles on pathophysiology of various sleep disorders. Obstructive sleep apnea is the representative sleep disorder that shows how deeply cytokines are involved in their pathophysiologic mechanisms of sleep disorders. Though there are many controversial issues on this topic, more mysterious part of normal sleep physiology and sleep disorders will be revealed in near future through thorough studies on sleep and cytokine.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.99-103
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• 2021

The purpose of this review is to examine the clinical use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders. Many studies have been conducted using objective evaluation tools for psychiatric evaluation, such as predicting psychiatric symptoms and treatment responses. Compared to other tools, fNIRS has the advantage of being a noninvasive, inexpensive, and portable method and can be used with patients in the awake state. This study mainly focused on its use in patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. We hope that research involving fNIRS will be actively conducted in various diseases in the future.