• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2003

Objectives: This paper introduces need and supply level of rural mental health care service and especially focuses on the evaluation for the community mental health programs of Public Health Centers(PHCs) in rural areas as the facilities for primary mental health care. Methods: We defined the need as prevalance rate and service utilization rate, for which reviewed the results of the epidemiological study of mental disorders using Korean Composite International Diagnostic Interview surveyed on a nationwide scale in 2001. Supply was appraised in terms of psychiatric beds and primary mental heath care facilities such as private psychiatric clinics, facilities for social rehabilitation, PHCs running community mental health programs. For this, we reveiwed a variety of annual reports related mental health published by Ministry of Health and Welfare. To evaluate the community mental health programs of PHCs in rural areas, we selected. randomly samples out of the 3rd community health plans including the contents of community mental health programs, which submitted by 89 rural counties and 44 cities mixed with rural areas, and used the program's guideline established by central government as a standard. Results: Prevalence rates of major psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia, alcoholism, major depression, anxiety disorder were higher in rural area than in urban area and 8.9% of psychiatric patients in both areas stayed at homes contacted with mental health manpower more than one time during the last year. Psychiatric beds were sufficiently supplied, but urban area had less beds than rural area contrary to general health care service. Psychiatric clinics were supplied very insufficiently in rural areas and PHCs bridged the gap instead. However rural PHCs got less financial support for community mental health programs from higher positioned agencies than urban PHCs. Rural community health programs not supported hardly worked out. Conclusions: Central government should consider a special policy for rural primary mental health care, because private psychiatric clinics can't be introduced in rural areas due to demand-deficiency and the financial independence of rural counties was very vulnerable.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.119-129
• /
• 2019

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive and psychological characteristics of patients who visited psychiatric outpatient clinic with military service suitability issues. Methods : Since January, 2017 to September, 2018, patients were recruited from the department of psychiatry of university hospital. Participants were diagnosed using DSM-5 criteria by board certified psychiatrists. And each of participants tested with K-WAIS-IV, K-SCL-95 by clinical psychologist. The data were analyzed using SPSS 18.0. Results : The results indicated 24.6% of the patients have significantly low level of intellectual functioning. and 10.8% of the patients have borderline level of intellectual functioning, and 26.3% of them were below average. The results of psychological characteristics showed patients have cautious and potentially dangerous level of depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, and suicidal idea. And PTSD subscale's mean score was above problematic level. Next, we divided patients into two groups based on question of whether the patient is eligible to serve in the military service or not arises from recruitment process or army training center. But two group didn't differ significantly. And for further analyses, we also divided patients into two groups based on if they got single psychiatric diagnosis or more than one psychiatric diagnosis. Conclusions : The results indicated that group which has coexisting psychiatric disorders were more depressed, had higher level of anger and aggression, and had more serious levels of suicidal ideas than single psychiatric diagnosis group. The implications and limitations were discussed along with some suggestions for the future studies.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.29 no.6
• /
• pp.747-753
• /
• 2019

Cognitive decline is characterized by reduced long-/short-term memory and attention span, and increased depression and anxiety. Such decline is associated with various degenerative brain disorders, especially Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). The increases in elderly populations suffering from cognitive decline create social problems and impose economic burdens, and also pose safety threats; all of these problems have been extensively researched over the past several decades. Possible causes of cognitive decline include metabolic and hormone imbalance, infection, medication abuse, and neuronal changes associated with aging. However, no treatment for cognitive decline is available. In neurodegenerative diseases, changes in the gut microbiota and gut metabolites can alter molecular expression and neurobehavioral symptoms. Changes in the gut microbiota affect memory loss in AD via the downregulation of NMDA receptor expression and increased glutamate levels. Furthermore, the use of probiotics resulted in neurological improvement in an AD model. PD and gut microbiota dysbiosis are linked directly. This interrelationship affected the development of constipation, a secondary symptom in PD. In a PD model, the administration of probiotics prevented neuron death by increasing butyrate levels. Dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been identified in AD and PD. Increased BBB permeability is also associated with gut microbiota dysbiosis, which led to the destruction of microtubules via systemic inflammation. Notably, metabolites of the gut microbiota may trigger either the development or attenuation of neurodegenerative disease. Here, we discuss the correlation between cognitive decline and the gut microbiota.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
• /
• v.40 no.4
• /
• pp.685-698
• /
• 2023

This study aimed to identify binge-eating behavior and food addiction in Korean population and to determine their associations with obesity, eating behaviors, mental health and cognitive characteristics. We collected clinical questionnaire scores related to eating problems (e.g. binge eating, food addiction, food cravings), mental health (e.g. depression), and cognitive functions (e.g. impulsivity, emotion regulation) in 257 Korean adults in the normal and the obese weight ranges. Binge-eating and food addiction were most frequent in obese women (binge-eating: 46.6%, food addiction: 29.3%) when we divided the participants into 4 groups depending on gender and obesity status. The independence test using the data with propensity score matching confirmed that binge-eating and food addiction were more prevalent in obese individuals. Finally, we constructed the logistic regression models using forward selection method to evaluate the influence of various clinical questionnaire scores on binge-eating and food addiction respectively. Binge-eating was significantly associated with the clinical scales of eating disorders, food craving, state anxiety, and emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal) as well as food addiction. Food addiction demonstrated the significant effect of food craving, binge-eating, the interaction of obesity and age, and years of education. In conclusion, we found that binge-eating and food addiction are much more frequent in females and obese individuals. Both binge-eating and food addiction commonly involved eating problems (e.g. food craving), but there was difference in mental health and cognitive risk factors. Therefore, it is required to distinguish food addiction from binge-eating and investigate intrinsic and environmental risk factors for each pathology.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.139-152
• /
• 2002

Objectives：This study was conducted to compare the clinical and neuropsychological characteristics by DSM-IV subtypes of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) patients who did not have comorbid psychiatric disorders. Methods：5-15 year old children with ADHD were recruited at psychiatric outpatient clinic of Yeungnam University hospital and the patients with comorbidity or neurological abnormalities were excluded. Finally, total 404 children with ADHD were selected for this study. There were 234 subjects of ADHD-C(57.9%), 156 subjects of ADHD-I(38.6%) and 14 subjects of ADHD-HI(3.5%), who fulfilled the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The mean age of the total subjects was 9.63±2.49 years old. The psychopathology, IQ, behavioral problems, neuropsychological executive function were evaluated before pharmacological treatment. The measures were Korean Personality Inventory of Child(K-PIC) for psychopathology, 4 behavioral check lists(ADDES-HV, ACTeRS, CAP, SNAP) for behavioral symptoms of ADHD, K-ABC and KEDI-WISC for IQ and Conner's CPT, WCST, SST for neuropsychological executive functions. Results：1) The prevalence of subtypes was ADHD-C, ADHD-I, ADHD-HI in decreasing order. There was no sex difference of prevalence among three subtypes. The mean age of ADHD-I was older than other subtypes. 2) There was significant differences of psychopathology among subtypes, the ADHD-C and ADHD-HI had higher than the ADHD-I in the scores of delinquent, hyperactivity and psychosis；the ADHD-C had higher than the ADHD-I in the scores of family relation and autism, the scores of ego resilience were lower than the ADHD-I. However, there was no difference in anxiety, depression and somatization scores among them. 3) The results of behavioral symptom check lists, the ADHD-C had higher the score of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity than the ADHD-I. Meanwhile the results of ACTeRs, which rated by the teachers, were different. 4) There were significant differences of sequential processing scale and arithmetics among subtypes in IQ using K-ABC, but there was no significant difference between the ADHD-C and the ADHD-I after excluding the ADHD-HI due to small numbers. 5) There was numerical difference among subtypes but did not reach statistical significance in three neuropsychological executive function tests. Conclusion：In conclusion, our results revealed that there was significant difference in clinical features among three subtypes but, no significant difference in executive functions.