A Study on Disease, Self-Esteem, Social Support and Health Management Behavior in Blind & Visually Handicapped Students

시각장애 학생들의 원인질환 및 사회적 지위, 자아존중감, 건강관리 행위에 관한 연구

Blindness or visually handicaps are found to be an important factor destroying lifestyles as well as a physical problem. According to the data of handicapped person's(v.h.p) registered in Korea, the number of v.h.p. has not decreased. Especially, visual handicapped adolescents (v.h.a.) suffer from an insufficiency of social support under the current education system. There is a special education system for v.h.a. in Korea, and, as a result v.h.a.'s are educated separately from general students and communites. Compared with the self-conception of general students, v.h.a.'s have a more negative self-conception. Among former studies 51.7% of v.h.p's are not in good health. This, of course, means that their handicap impacts on other health problems. The first purpose of this study is to find out the causes of disease and the degree of social support, self-esteem, health management behavior provided and then to analyze the effect of self-esteem and social support on their behavior. To accomplish these purposes, visually handicapped the middle and high school students in Seoul city and Kyung-gi province were selected and 300 students sampled. The main results are as follows : 1) The highest specific handicap is impaired lenses (19.7%). 2. There were high correlations between health management behavior, self-esteem, and social support. 3. Social support is a more important variable than self-esteem on health management behavior. 4. Age of entry and length of stay in their special dormitories, and teacher's support account for 16% of psychological health management behavior 5. Age of entry in their special dormitory and total degree of social support account for 12% of preventive health behavior.