• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.64-73
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• 2020

Suicidality is the most serious complication of mood disorders and psychosis; effective treatment should reduce suicide rates. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development age-standardized suicide rate in Korea was 22.6 in 2018, much higher compared to other countries worldwide. As mental and psychiatric problems are the main reasons for suicide attempts, accounting for 31.6% in 2018, targeting such problems should be the focus of efforts to reduce suicide rates. However, the ability of current pharmacotherapeutic and psychotherapeutic interventions to reduce suicide rates is limited due to their delayed effects. Therefore, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been proposed as an alternative treatment. This approach is effective for treating most mental disorders associated with high suicide rates, including severe depression, bipolar disorder, and intractable psychotic disorders; ECT is also effective for Parkinson's disease, which has the highest suicide rate among all disorders in Korea. The acute, long-term, and prophylactic effects of ECT on suicidality have been reported in the literature, and treatment guidelines outside of Korea recommend that ECT be used at an early stage for rapid reduction of suicide rates, as opposed to being applied as a treatment of last resort. However, only ~0.092 of every 10000 members of the Korean general population received ECT in 2018; this is much lower than the average rate worldwide, of 2.2 per 10000. Elimination of obstacles to the use of ECT, early crisis intervention involving administration of ECT for rapid stabilization, and maintenance ECT to prevent recurrence should reduce suicide rates.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.253-276
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• 2014

The purpose of the present study was to examine psychometric properties of the BSI-18 in Korean adults with mental disorders. This study examined internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, and a factor structure of the BSI. The sample consisted of 180 adults with mental disorders, who enrolled in mental hospitals and in a day hospital. Data was analysed using reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. Major findings were as follows. The Korean version of the BSI showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as excellent convergent validity. The original three-factor structure of the BSI-18, proposed by Derogatis, 2001, fitted to the data. These findings indicate that the BSI-18 is a reliable and valid measure as a psychiatric assessment tool and a treatment outcome measure.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.105-119
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• 2022

Purpose: This study was attempted to identify the awareness of paramedic students to patients with mental and behavioral disorders and suggest its improvement measures. Methods: Data were collected from the paramedic students after consent to this study through online. The period of data collection was from May 18 to August 1, 2022 and 120 questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS statistics 28.0. Results: The level of prejudice of subjects showed 2.73 points and their level of discrimination showed 2.52 points. There was statistically significant difference according to gender, grade, experience of field practice, reason for major selection etc. in prejudice and discrimination levels. There was statistically significant difference according to contact experience to patients, contact place, taking subjects etc. in prejudice and discrimination levels. The high correlation showed between total prejudice and discrimination (r=.853, p<.001). The improvement measures of an awareness about patients were positive role of mass media, better educational contents etc. Conclusion: Paramedic students need to treat patients with mental and behavioral disorders without prejudice and discrimination. Therefore, it needed to develop and apply the various educational programs for paramedic students to be able to improve an awareness about patients with positive role of mass media about them.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.83-94
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• 2013

This study with emphasis on protecting human rights of people with mental disorder investigated human rights awareness among mental health workers and identify factors affecting their awareness. Questionnaires were sent out to employees working in mental health facilities in all parts of the country and of those 1094 were used to analyze. According to the analysis, employees' human rights awareness was ranked highest in the areas of occupational therapy and lowest in the areas of admission and discharge. Those who are women, aged between 30 and 40, highly educated, with long tenure, employed as social workers and working at rehabilitation programs presented high awareness of human rights so did employees with license in mental health and training experience in human rights. The result also presented negative correlation between employees' human rights awareness and their prejudice against people with mental disorder. Through this study, guidelines will be set up to help employees acknowledge the importance of human rights awareness and raise their awareness to promote and practice human rights of people with mental disorder.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.48-55
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• 2023

Objective : This study aims to investigate the concept of mental health literacy, its evolution, and its significance in modern healthcare practices. Methods : This paper reviews the evolution of mental health literacy, examining pertinent studies both within the country and internationally. It also addresses the limitations and challenges associated with mental health diagnoses. Results : Findings from various studies indicate that public awareness and recognition of mental health issues are generally inadequate. Identified causes of mental health conditions by study participants point to personal and societal influences, while biological factors are frequently neglected. In South Korea, there is a notable preference for non-professional support over psychiatric interventions. Conclusion : This study highlights the growing importance of mental health literacy in today's society, emphasizing the need for accurate understanding of mental health issues and effective treatment approaches. Similar to physical health literacy, mental health literacy should be considered a basic human right. This perspective marks a shift from a knowledge monopoly held by experts to the inclusion and active involvement of 'people with lived experience' in the mental health service system.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.148-154
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• 2022

Background: Bus driving is a mentally demanding activity that requires prolonged attention to ensure safety. The aim of the study was to assess mental fatigue caused by driving a public bus and to find a profile of workers at higher risk. Methods: We evaluated changes of critical flicker fusion (CFF) (index of central arousal) and heart rate variability (HRV) (index of autonomic balance) in a 6-hour driving shift on a real route, in 31 professional bus drivers, and we tested the influence of personal factors such as sleep quality, BMI, and age. Paired t-test was used to test differences of CFF and HRV between both initial and final phase of driving, while multiple linear regression tested the influence of personal variables on the indexes of mental fatigue. Results: Results showed that CFF significantly decreased after 6 hours of bus driving (41.91 Hz, sd 3.31 vs. 41.15 Hz, sd 3.15; p = 0.041), and heart rate significantly decreased in the final phase of driving, with respect to the initial phase (85 vs. 78 bpm, p = 0.027). Increasing age (beta = -0.729, p = 0.022), risk of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (beta = -0.530, p = 0.04), and diurnal sleepiness (beta = -0.406, p = 0.017) showed a significant effect on influencing mental fatigue. Conclusion: Elderly drivers at higher risk of sleep disorders are more prone to mental fatigue, when exposed to driving activity. Monitoring indexes of central arousal and autonomic balance, coupled with the use of structured questionnaires can represent a useful strategy to detect profile of workers at higher risk of mental fatigue in such duty.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.370-396
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• 2024

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020. The lifestyle of people all over the world has changed since. In most cases, the pandemic has appeared to create severe mental disorders, anxieties, and depression among people. Mostly, the researchers have been conducting surveys to identify the impacts of the pandemic on the mental health of people. Despite the better quality, tailored, and more specific data that can be generated by surveys,social media offers great insights into revealing the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Since people feel connected on social media, thus, this study aims to get the people's sentiments about the pandemic related to mental issues. Word Cloud was used to visualize and identify the most frequent keywords related to COVID-19 and mental health disorders. This study employs Majority Voting Ensemble (MVE) classification and individual classifiers such as Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression (LR) to classify the sentiment through tweets. The tweets were classified into either positive, neutral, or negative using the Valence Aware Dictionary or sEntiment Reasoner (VADER). Confusion matrix and classification reports bestow the precision, recall, and F1-score in identifying the best algorithm for classifying the sentiments.

• Journal of Korean Neuropsychiatric Association
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.190-208
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• 2018

Objectives To initiate and develop a treatment guideline in multidisciplinary approaches for related professions who are either working and/or living with children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders who show behavioral problems. Methods To collect and reflect opinions from multiple professions who assumedly have different interventions or mediations on behavioral problems, a self-report survey and Focus Group Interview (FGI) were conducted for a group of child and adolescent psychiatrists, behavioral therapists, special education teachers, social welfare workers, and caregivers. Results According to a self-report survey and FGI results from multiple professional groups, aggressive behavior is the mostly common behavioral problem necessitating urgent interventions. However, both mainly used intervention strategies and effective treatment methods were different depending on professional backgrounds, such as pharmacological treatment, parent training, and behavior therapy, even though they shared an importance of improving communication skills. In addition, there was a common understanding of necessity to include parent training in a guideline. Lastly the data suggested lack of proper treatment facilities, qualified behavior therapists, and lack of standardized treatment guideline in the field needed to be improved for a quality of current therapeutic services. Conclusion It is supported that several subjects should be included in the guidelines, such as how to deal with aggressive behavior, parent training, and biological aspects of neurodevelopmental disorders. Also, it is expected that publishing the guideline would be helpful to above multiple professions as it is investigated that there are lack of treatment facility and qualified behavioral therapists compared to need at the moment.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.80-87
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• 2020

Objectives: The prevalence of psychiatric disorders among young adults is different from that among younger or older age groups because of biological and environmental changes. The purpose of this study was to analyze the diagnostic distribution of psychiatric disorders in 19-30-year-old Koreans based on their age and gender using data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). Methods: From the 2011 medical claims sample data of NHIS of 1,375,842 people, we extracted the data of 221,038 people aged 19-30 years, including 106,232 (48.1%) men and 114,806 (51.9%) women. We evaluated the overall changes in the diagnostic distribution of psychiatric disorders over a 3-year period. Results: The diagnostic frequency in women was 13,627 (59.0%), which was significantly higher than that in men. "Other anxiety disorders" was the most common psychiatric disorder in both genders, followed by depressive episodes, somatoform disorders, "other neurotic disorders," and nonorganic sleep disorders. In men, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or intellectual disabilities were not among the top 10 disorders. In women, no significant changes in major psychiatric disorders were seen over the 3-year period. Conclusion: These results reveal the trends of diagnostic distribution of mental illnesses depending on the development, particularly in young adulthood. It is necessary to identify whether such trends are due to biological or environmental factors, aging processes, or complex influences.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.177-185
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• 2017

Background: The mental problems of the elderly are at issue as a serious social phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to identify risk factors affecting the mood disorders of the elderly. Methods: The subjects were 1,779,236 aged ${\geq}65$ and participated in health screening. Dependent variable was mood disorders. Independent variables were consisted of community level (regional deprivation index and healthcare resources) and individual level (sex, age, insurance type, disability, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, body mass index, and healthcare utilization). Multilevel logistic regression was performed. Results: At the individual level, women, employed insured, severely disabled people, heavy alcohol drinkers, high-intensity physical activity, body mass index, and patients who had chronic disease and severe disease were significantly associated with mood disorders. As the age has increased, it has let increase of mood disorders. At the community level, as the regional deprivation index has increased by 1, mood disorders has been increased by 1.005 times. The intra-class coefficient was 7.04%. Conclusion: We found individual and community level factors are associated with mood disorders. Systematic approach is essential to reduce mood disorders.