• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.59-67
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• 2021

Purpose : This study examined the factors related to sexual intercourse among adolescents in South Korea. Methods : The study sample was comprised of 65,528 middle and high school students aged 12 to 18 years in 2016. For this study, using the data from the 12th Korea youth risk behavior web-based survey, a chi-squared test, and hierarchical logistic regression analysis we reconducted with the SPSS 22.0 program considering personal, family, school, and regional characteristics. Results : The proportion of adolescents who had sexual intercourse was 6.0 % of boys and 2.7 % of girls, and 6.3 % of high school students and 2.4 % of middle school students. The statistically significant related factors of sexual intercourse were gender, grade, attempted suicide, ever drinking, ever smoking, habitual or purposeful drug use, weekly allowance, and coed school in the final model 4. Adolescents with suicide attempts had 2.49 times more sexual intercourse than adolescents with no experience of suicide attempts. Compared to adolescents without alcohol, smoking, and habitual drug use, those who have experienced alcohol, smoking, habitual or purposeful drug use were 2.22 times, 3.76 times, and 3.39 times more likely to have had sexual intercourse, respectively. Adolescents with a weekly allowance of more than 100,000 won per week and adolescents in coed schools were 2.84 times and 1.40 times more likely to have had sexual intercourse, respectively. Conclusion : Multi-level interventions should be considered in school sexual education programs while considering the substantiality of sex education and the actual adolescents' needs. In addition, sexual health interventions in cyberspace for high-risk groups may be needed to consider the emotional and mental characteristics, given the factors related to sexual intercourse in adolescents.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.399-405
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• 2012

The brain is the body's most organized and controlled organ, and it governs various psychological and mental functions. A brain abnormality could greatly affect one's physical and mental abilities, and consequently one's social life. Brain disorders can be broadly categorized into three main afflictions: stroke, brain tumor, and dementia. Among these, stroke is a common disease that occurs owing to a disorder in blood flow, and it is accompanied by a sudden loss of consciousness and motor paralysis. The main types of strokes are infarction and hemorrhage. The exact diagnosis and early treatment of an infarction are very important for the patient's prognosis and for the determination of the treatment direction. In this study, texture features were analyzed in order to develop a prototype auto-diagnostic system for infarction using computer auto-diagnostic software. The analysis results indicate that of the six parameters measured, the average brightness, average contrast, flatness, and uniformity show a high cognition rate whereas the degree of skewness and entropy show a low cognition rate. On the basis of these results, it was suggested that a digital CT image obtained using the computer auto-diagnostic software can be used to provide valuable information for general CT image auto-detection and diagnosis for pre-reading. This system is highly advantageous because it can achieve early diagnosis of the disease and it can be used as supplementary data in image reading. Further, it is expected to enable accurate medical image detection and reduced diagnostic time in final-reading.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.221-227
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• 2015

Purpose: Confronting the growing burden of dementia requires understanding the causes and predictors of dementia in order to develop preventive strategies. In Korea a large proportion (71%) of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, and the risk factors have not yet been elucidated. Dietary factors may be possible risk factors, however research on the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and dietary behaviors has been insufficient. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between compliance with the "Dietary Guidelines for Elderly (The Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2011)" and Alzheimer's disease among Korean elderly. Methods: Elderly persons who visited a University hospital or a dementia center of Seoul and agreed to participate in the examinations were selected. Among 277 subjects, 89 Alzheimer patients were selected with diagnosis and 118 subjects were assigned to the control group. Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was based on Alzheimer's disease criteria of Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) and criteria of National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer's Disease and related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA). Information on the general characteristics, health related behaviors and compliance with the dietary guidelines for Korean elderly was collected by face to face interview using a structured questionnaire. Anthropometric variables were measured during the survey. Results: Total compliance score of dietary guidelines was significantly lower in the Alzheimer's disease group than in the control group (p = 0.0001). The odds ratio of Alzheimer's disease was significantly decreased in the group with the highest dietary guideline compliance score (OR = 0.47, 95 % CI = 0.18~1.09) compared to the group with the lowest compliance score. Conclusion: The results indicate that increasing compliance with the dietary guidelines could be an effective strategy to decrease the risk of Alzheimer's disease among Korean elderly.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.5-41
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• 1979

Vast volumes of studies of the medical and public health aspects of fertility and family planning have been published by the various institutes of health related research and university scholars in Korea. None of them, however, have dealed with the population problems associated with biologically and mentally handicapped people. It must be emphasized that the purpose of Korea's population policy should be to improve the quality of the population rather than to decrease its rate of increase. In this spirit, the first report of this study is to identify problems related with mentally and physically less fitted population, and to attempt to offer the possible solutions to the health planners and policy-makers. Several nation-wide surveys of the handicapped people in Korea have been compared. Each survey shows a wide range of difference in the prevalence of the handicaps(see Table 13). In this study, the data on the handicaps are collected by two independent system ; one by the nation-wide survey and the other by the reporting system existing at the Seoul National University Demonstration Health Project. The Chandrasekar-Deming technique was used to estimate the total number of handicaps. The estimates are summarized in the tables 8, 9 and 10. Estimate of total number of handicapped people in Korea is 601, 400 with the prevalence rate of 16.1 per thousand persons. Even if taking a number of conditions which may result in a biased estimate of the total number of the handicaps into consideration, the proportion of handicapped people in Korea has increased in the past two decade as the result of the rapid decline in fertility and childhood mortality, which consequently prolonged life expectancy of persons with congenital or acquired impediment. An increase in the proportion of handicapped people will eventually bring about serious problems of social welfare, medical care, and population qualities from various aspects including eugenics. To tackle the problem, there must be an increased emphasis on the prevention of handicaps from the government and private sector. Based on the amount and quality of data, and from the practical point of view, this study prepared a set of recommendations for the government to strengthen its programs of the preventive activities during the prenatal period and early childhood, early finding from routine examinations, and proper social and medical rehabilitation.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.216-222
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• 2022

Background: This study assessed the psychological impact of the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on university hospital nurses. It provides an assessment of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, distress, and burnout of nurses dealing directly and indirectly with COVID-19. Methods: In a web-based, cross-sectional study, 111 nurses from Daegu Catholic University Hospital in Korea were enrolled from August 4 to August 9, 2020. Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and Maslach Burnout Inventory were used to assess the psychological symptoms of depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and burnout among the study participants. Results: Of 111 nurses, 35 (31.5%), nine (8.1%), 26 (23.4%), and 49 (44.1%) experienced depression, anxiety, distress, and burnout, respectively. Nurses who performed COVID-19-related tasks were more likely to have moderate depression (related vs. unrelated, 52.0% vs. 25.6%; p=0.037). There were no differences in anxiety, distress, and burnout between nurses with and without COVID-19-related tasks. More than 50% of the participants showed receptive and positive attitudes toward caring for COVID-19 patients. Conclusion: Nurses who performed COVID-19-related tasks had a higher risk of depression. There were no significant differences in anxiety, distress, and burnout between the two groups. Since nurses who perform COVID-19-related tasks are more prone to psychological distress, continued psychiatric interventions are required for infectious disease outbreaks with a high mortality rate for healthcare workers who are emotionally vulnerable.

• Journal of Korean geriatric psychiatry
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2017

Objective : This study aimed to investigate the effect of community-based Goal-Achieving program in geriatric depressive symptoms preliminarily. Methods : We obtained data from elderly Korean subjects with major depressive disorder (n=51) aged 60 years or older at baseline, taking case management from community mental health center. Subjects were randomly assigned to intervention group (n=24) and control group (n=27). We investigated depressive symptoms through Short Form Geriatric Depression Scale-Korean version (SGDS-K) at baseline and every month for 3 months to all subjects. We tested interaction between group and time in SGDS-K score to evaluate the effect of program. And post hoc test examined between group differences of SGDS-K at each time points. Results : In quadratic linear mixed effects model analysis, interaction between group and time was statistically significant (Total SGDS-K score : coefficient=0.29, p<0.001 ; SGDS-K dysphoria subscale : 0.18, p<0.001 ; SGDS-K hopelessness subscale : 0.05, p=0.089 ; SGDS-K cognitive impairment subscale : 0.06, p=0.003). And significant between group difference was shown in post hoc test at time points of third month (SGDS-K score of control group : SGDS-K score of intervention group=$10.74{\pm}3.482$ : $7.25{\pm}4.475$, p=0.0184). Conclusion : These results may suggest that 'Community-based the Goal-Achieving program' has efficacy in reducing geriatric depressive symptoms.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.464-472
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• 2023

Middle-aged women experience a lot of physical and mental stress during their developmental cycle. This stress reduces the quality of life because it leads to chronic pain and disease. Forest therapy is attracting attention as an alternative to this. Forest therapy refers to improving human health through the therapeutic elements of forests. Accordingly, this study was conducted to determine whether a sensory insight-based forest therapy program was effective in reducing stress in middle-aged women. For this purpose, middle-aged women who wanted to participate in the forest therapy program were recruited, 20 each were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group, and pre- and post-tests were conducted. The forest therapy program consisted of 8 sessions of 6 hours based on sense and insight. The forest therapy program was held at Saryeoni Forest in Jeju, and the measurement tools were compared by measuring perceived stress, leisure satisfaction, and stress index through pulse wave testing. The results of the study showed that the forest therapy program lowered stress and improved leisure satisfaction.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 2008

Arts Therapy Education is an area under major arts therapy field which focuses on the children in school setting who has emotional, behavioral problem, and the need of it has been increasing as for after-school programs. The study purports to delineate arts therapy education by identifying the elements that differentiate from the major arts therapy approaches, respectively. Arts therapy education is an integrated approach which focuses on primarily alleviating children's emotional problem through therapeutic experiences of arts, and then secondarily helping them to actualize their potentials in learning and achieve educational outcomes. It is also examined that arts therapists working in school setting who need to acquire knowledge in education related theories and further be able to work with emotional, psychological issues from ecological factors. Also it is needed to seek efficient strategies to promote professionality of arts therapy education.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.27-43
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a maternal happiness scale which can be used for mothers who take care of young children, school-aged children, and adolescents. First, the maternal happiness scale was developed based on literature review and the consent of experts. Finally it was consisted of 56 items from 18 elements of happiness through checking the contents validity with professionals. Second, final respondents for the survey were 1300 mothers who had children with and without disabilities in Seoul, Busan, Gyeonggi, and Kyungnam. Third, the 8 factors including the 53 items were extracted through the mothers' appraisal of the items and the review of the adequacy for the factor analysis. The 8 factors were consisted with 'Family relations with family', 'Laid-back life and self-esteem', 'Physical and mental health', 'Independency and development', 'Spirituality', 'Interpersonal relations', 'Appearance', 'Sociocultual environment'. Fourth, the maternal happiness scale demonstrated appropriate levels of construct validity, item internal consistency, distribution of item response, and item discrimination. The results of this study enhance our understanding of the core factors of maternal happiness. In addition, the findings have implications for supporting mothers who take care of young children, school-aged children, and adolescents.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.347-353
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• 2016

This study aims to analyze how parents and their children participating in sports after school hours positively affects their communication and behavior based on the stratified sampling of 189 students (fifth and sixth graders) in Cheongju city C-province. The result from the exploratory factor and the structural analysis using SPSS18.0 showed that participating in sports improved parent-child communication including increasing their motivation, self-confidence, and self-esteem, and reducing children's problematic behavior such as anxiety, feeling insecure, insubordination, and aggressiveness. In order to improve the children's mental health, it would be essential to set various programs of after school sports and more importantly validate its quality.