• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.615-626
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• 2012

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate caregiver burden and health related quality of life (HRQoL) among male spouses who cared for partners with a stroke. Methods: The subjects were spouses of 121 female patients who visited the neurology outpatients department in one tertiary hospital located in Seoul between February and April in 2011. Results: The mean age of the male caregivers was $71.25{\pm}5.51$ years. The mean score of caregiver's burden was moderate ($63.28{\pm}9.85$). The average reported caregiving time was $58.48{\pm}5.51$ min/day with the male spouses spending more time in house-working than with caregiving activities. The reported depression and care giving time, plus the cognitive status and functional dependencies of the spouse were significantly related to male caregiver's burden. The mean scores of 'physical health' and 'mental health' for quality of life for the male caregivers was moderate (47.49 and 47.33 respectively). Overall, caregiver's burden has a negative effect on the HRQoL of male spouses. Conclusion: Caregiver's burden and HRQoL are important problems which are in need of nurses' attention. It is suggested that intervention programs for male spouses be developed with a focus on emotional and social support as well as education about the caregiving role.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.496-507
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• 2012

Purpose: This study was based on social-role theory, and purposes were to investigate (1) how depression and health determinants vary with married and employed women, and (2) what factors contribute to depression according to family cycle. Methods: A stratified convenience sample of 765 married and employed women was recruited during May to August 2010. Study variables of depression, socio-demographic threatening factors, psycho-stimulating factors, and social-role related factors were measured via a structured questionnaire. Results: Prevalence rate for depression was 18.6%, with highest rate (25.4%) from elementary laborers. Greater levels of depression were related to women's occupation, higher life stress, and poorer health; lower social support and vulnerable personality; higher levels of social-role related stress. From multivariate analysis, women with preadolescents were the most vulnerable to depression affected by occupation, life stress, personality, and parenting stress. These factors (except for occupational class) combined with economic status, social support, and housework unfairness were significant for depression in women with adolescents. Conclusion: Depression among married and employed women differs by psycho-stimulating and social role relevant factors in addition to occupational class and family life cycle. Female elementary laborers and women with children need to have the highest prioritization for community mental health programs.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.114-122
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• 2020

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the effect of integrated nursing using cognicise and neurofeedback on cognition and α waves among elderly individuals. Methods: This quasi-experimental single group pretest-posttest study included 29 Korean adults aged 65 years or older who participated at a senior welfare center in Y city from February to May 2019. Each integrated nursing session consisted of cognicise (10 minutes) and neurofeedback (20 minutes). Subjects participated twice a week for 10 weeks. Structured questionnaires to assess participants' general characteristics and the Korean version of the Mini-Mental Status Examination for Dementia Screening (K-MMSE-DS) were applied. Alpha waves were measured using BrainMaster. Results: Following the integrated nursing program, alpha waves improved in F3 (t=2.41, p=.023), C3 (t=3.00, p=.006), C4 (t=2.60, p=.015), P3 (t=2.43, p=.022), O1 (t=2.30, p=.029), T3 (t=3.05, p=.005), T4 (t=2.28, p=.030), T5 (t=2.91, p=.007), Fz (t=2.30, p=.029), Cz (t=2.73, p=.011), and Pz (t=2.23, p=.034). Most subjects experienced improvement in concentration after participating in the intervention. Conclusion: This study provides evidence for the use of a neuroscientific approach including brain wave measurement to improve cognitive health among community-living elderly people.

• Korean Journal of Family Medicine
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.340-346
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• 2018

Background: Several studies have revealed the frequency of family mealtimes to be inversely associated with depressive symptoms in adolescents. However, there have been few studies in older populations. This cross-sectional study investigated the association between family mealtime frequency and depressive symptoms in elderly Koreans. Methods: This study analyzed 4,959 elderly men and women (aged 65 years or older) who participated in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Self-administered questionnaires were used to assess depressive status, family mealtime frequency, and covariates. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the association using the eating alone group as a reference. Results: After adjusting for all covariates, participants who had family meals 3 times a day had fewer depressive symptoms than the eating alone group; adjusted odds ratios (ORs) (95% confidence intervals [CIs]) were 0.72 (0.58-0.89) for point depressiveness/anxiety and 0.73 (0.56-0.94) for depressiveness lasting for at least 2 weeks. In suicidal ideation, the OR (95% CI) of eating with family twice a day was significant after full adjusting for covariates at 0.67 (0.50-0.88). Conclusion: Family mealtimes were closely associated with depressive symptoms in elderly Koreans, which suggests that maintaining intrafamilial bonding is important for mental health in an older population.

• Mood & Emotion
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.152-157
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• 2018

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine psychosocial factors influencing suicidal ideation of community dwelling elderly, using the senior community center in Jeonnam Province. Methods : A total of 2,202 subjects (369 males, 1,833 females) were recruited. We evaluated sociodemographic factors, using a self-reporting questionnaire. Subjects completed the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form Korean Version (SGDS), Multi-dimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Korean version of the General Health Questionale-12 (GHQ-12) and Satisfaction with Life scale (SWLS), to assess psychosocial factors affecting suicidal ideation. Results : Among 2,202 subjects, 179 (8.1%) reported recent suicidal ideation. Self-perceptive health status (p<0.001) and physical disease (p=0.002) revealed differences between two groups. The scores of four scales in the suicidal group were significantly different from the control group: SGDS (p<0.001) and GHQ-12 (p<0.001) were higher, while MSPSS (p<0.001) and SWLS (p<0.001) were lower, in the suicidal ideation group than the control group. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that physical disease (OR 2.575, 95%CI 1.022-6.492), SGDS (OR 1.181, 95%CI 1.120-1.246) and GHQ-12 (OR 1.192, 95%CI 1.108-1.283), were significantly associated with suicidal ideation. Conclusion : Findings support that physical disease, depression, and general mental health may correlate to suicidal ideation in the elderly.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.557-564
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• 2018

Along with the aging society, the prevalence of dementia is also increasing. Dementia causes short-term memory loss as well as difficulties of performing daily activities and gradually causes suffering of the patients and their family. In spite of various programs for prevention of dementia of older people are being implemented, there is a lack of developing natural-based program for physical and mental health promotion. Therefore, it is necessary to develop programs for the elderly living alone who are more vulnerable to dementia because of their social and economic isolation. The purpose of this study was to develop a natural-based program and investigate the effects of 10 weeks forest therapy program for dementia prevention to improve the psychological and physical health of the elderly living alone. The experimental subjects were 30 elderly (aged 65 or older) and 31 elderly participated in control group. The Stress response, depressive symptoms, weight, body mass index (BMI), fat mass and muscle mass were measured for pre and post test. The results showed that the experimental group showed subjective stress relief (t=5.249, p=.000), improvement in symptoms of depression (t=4.152, p=.000), and decreases in weight (t=2.686, p=.012), BMI (t=2.629, p=.014) and fat mass (t=2.918, p=.007) after the forest therapy program. The experimental group showed lower stress reactions(t=-7.185, p=.000) and less depressive symptoms (t=-5.303, p=.000) than control group after participating the program. These results suggest that periodic forest exposure can help having less stressful and depressive status than non-forest exposure and the forest therapy program can reduce participants' psychological and physical risk factors of dementia.

• Healthcare Informatics Research
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.253-262
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• 2018

Objectives: We reviewed digital epidemiological studies to characterize how researchers are using digital data by topic domain, study purpose, data source, and analytic method. Methods: We reviewed research articles published within the last decade that used digital data to answer epidemiological research questions. Data were abstracted from these articles using a data collection tool that we developed. Finally, we summarized the characteristics of the digital epidemiological studies. Results: We identified six main topic domains: infectious diseases (58.7%), non-communicable diseases (29.4%), mental health and substance use (8.3%), general population behavior (4.6%), environmental, dietary, and lifestyle (4.6%), and vital status (0.9%). We identified four categories for the study purpose: description (22.9%), exploration (34.9%), explanation (27.5%), and prediction and control (14.7%). We identified eight categories for the data sources: web search query (52.3%), social media posts (31.2%), web portal posts (11.9%), webpage access logs (7.3%), images (7.3%), mobile phone network data (1.8%), global positioning system data (1.8%), and others (2.8%). Of these, 50.5% used correlation analyses, 41.3% regression analyses, 25.6% machine learning, and 19.3% descriptive analyses. Conclusions: Digital data collected for non-epidemiological purposes are being used to study health phenomena in a variety of topic domains. Digital epidemiology requires access to large datasets and advanced analytics. Ensuring open access is clearly at odds with the desire to have as little personal data as possible in these large datasets to protect privacy. Establishment of data cooperatives with restricted access may be a solution to this dilemma.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.209-221
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• 2014

Objectives: The objective of this study was to identify the effects of area-based health promotion initiatives with community participation and partnerships conducted in Sabong-Myeon, Jinju City for three years. Methods: We used data from the '2008 Sabong-Myeon Health Survey' and the '2011 Health Plus Happiness Plus Community Health Survey'. The study comprised 520 systematically sampled individuals, composed of 300 adults in 2008 and 200 adults in 2011. We compared some health behavior and mental health indicators as well as social capital levels between these two surveys. Results: The prevalences of smoking and walking exercise in 2011 were significantly higher than those in 2008. The prevalences of high risk alcohol consumption in men, stress perception, depressive symptoms experience, and suicide ideation were significantly lower than those in 2008. The proportion of people having a high level of social capital in 2011 was significantly higher than that in 2008, regardless of sex or marital status. However, the difference in the proportion was not statistically significant among people with a high educational background. Conclusions: This study suggested that the 3 years' implementation of area-based health promotion initiatives conducted in Sabong-Myeon might help to improve the mental health and social capital level of this community. The long-term health effects of area-based health promotion initiatives with community participation and partnerships need to be studied further, and lessons from these initiatives can be obtained by adapting proper evaluation methods.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.35-47
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• 1999

Medication non-compliance among the elderly results in medical problems and substantial cost to the health care system. This study investigate predicted variable related to the medication task ability among elderly. This study was done in the selected 4 villages in Kimchun County of Kyungbuk Province from July to August, 1996. The subject was the resident that 202 adults above 60 years of age. The questionnaire of interview included medication task ability, socio-demographic data, COOP/WONCA chart, family ABGAR score. BDI(Beck depression inventory), ADL(activities of daily living), IADL(instrumental activities of daily living), and MMSE-K(minimental state examination-Korean version). The results were as followed : 1. Approximately 49% of study population was taking drug medication currently. We found that 93% of study population was successful at the medication task all alone, 6% was failure at the medication task all alone, so need help partly or completely. 2. Significant variables between group of medication task ability were age, educational attainment, IADL, and MMSE-K in univariate analysis. And significant correlated variables with medication task ability were ADL, IADL, MMSE-K, and BDI in correlation analysis. 3. Major predictors to medication task ability on multiple logistic regression were IADL and sex finally. Findings suggest that IADL is related to medication task ability than other test battery of health status, so IADL could be used to necessary for medication management and add information to conventional methods of assessing mental status.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.242-252
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• 2021

Objectives: This study examined the current status of depression and related factors among children using community child center. Methods: A cross-sectional study selected children in grades 4-6 who used the Gwangju and Jeollanamdo community child center (n=224) using a convenience sampling method. General characteristics, family characteristics, children's emotional characteristics, children's school life environment and depression status were assessed using a self-reported questionnaire. Results: The average score of depression among children using community child center was 15.31±7.70 out of a total of 27. Fifty-eight (25.9%) children had depression above 22 points. Variables related to children's depression were shown as grade, subjective economic level awareness, after-school activities excluding local children's centers, presence of family members after school, and family structure. Conclusions: The depression prevalence of children using community child center was higher. Policy support such as children's psychological support programs would be needed to reduce children's depression, and community child centers are expected to be effective in reducing children's depression if continuous child psychological support services are developed for children's mental health.