• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.547-559
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• 2022

This study is a qualitative study to explore caring of a mentally disabled family using mental rehabilitation facilities. As a result of the analysis, the life of a mentally disabled family appeared in 6 topics and 12 sub-themes. Life before the outbreak was warm and comfortable like an electric stove, and a frustrating and difficult life like a parrot in a cage due to family conflicts. The feeling of looking at the child who is starting to develop symptoms is fear and hopelessness that is hard to see ahead, and a sense of guilt for a child trapped in a disease before blooming his life. Forced hospitalization, and my feelings were torn apart, and my thoughts were confused by opaque recovery and worries about future life. The experience I felt as the disease lasted for a long time and hospitalized and discharged repeatedly feared that the mental illness of the family would be known to the people around me, and found that they struggled to cope with repeated recurrence and worsening symptoms. While using mental rehabilitation facilities, the changed life was comforted in a comfortable shelter, and turned out that there was hope for the future and that there was room to smile. The life expected in the future and the theme of hope turned out to be grateful for small changes and determined to be a warm fence for recovery.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.40 no.5 s.274
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• pp.369-375
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• 2007

Background: Patients suffering with pectus carinatum complain of cosmetic problems when they stand and this in spite of wearing cloths. The standard surgical treatment of pectus carinatum is resection of the deformed cartilages, but the wide operative scar, post-operative pain and complications related with such an operation can occur. Therefore, we have peformed compressive brace therapy as a non-operative treatment for pectus carinatum and we observed the effects and the efficiency of this treatment. Material and Method: From January, 2001 to December, 2006, 109 patients wore the compressive brace for all day. The degree of satisfaction was evaluated after $6\sim9$ months of wearing the compressive brace. The degree of satisfaction was evaluated by a score of from $1\sim4$. A score of 1 was assigned when the status was worse, 2 when it was the same, 3 when there was partial improvement and 4 when remarkable improvement was observed. The degree of satisfaction was assessed subjectively by the parent if the patient was a child younger than middle school age, and the patients older than middle school age assessed the score themselves. Result: The mean score of the overall degree of satisfaction was $3.93{\pm}0.33$. Recurrence of pectus carinatum after removal of compressive brace occurred in 6 patients (5.5%) of the total 109 patients. But 4 patients of the total 6 recurred patients stopped wearing of compressive brace against our advice. The 6 recurred patients were re-corrected by re-wearing the compressive brace within 3 months after they originally removed the compressive brace. The complications were discomfort with initially wearing the compressive brace, which occurred in all patients, skin rash due to the compressive brace for 76 patients (69.7%) and skin discolorization with excessive compression for f6 patients (5.5%). The skin rash and discolorization returned to normal within a few months after removal of the compressive brace. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that non-surgical treatment with using the compressive brace for patients with pectus carinatum was effective, and especially for children and teenagers. Non-surgical treatment with using a compressive brace would be helpful for the patients suffering with pectus carinatum and who dislike surgical operations because of their fear about general anesthesia and operation-related complications. Yet long-term follow up is necessary to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of this compressive brace and the recurrences after removal of the compressive brace.