OBJECTIVES: To use focus-group interviews (FGI) to determine the current state of the Korean mental health service delivery system, inter-agency patient links, and identify associated problems. METHODS: The FGI were conducted by seven workers from psychiatric rehabilitation centers and community mental health centers and seven social workers from mental health hospitals. RESULTS: Within the mental health service delivery system, disconnection of the community network after discharge is considered a serious problem. The following improvement proposals are suggested : 1) the control tower should govern the community network after discharge, 2) consider insurance costs during activation of hospital links, and 3) expand information sharing related to community social facilities. With regard to non-voluntary admission and long-term hospitalization, most focus group members considered the revolving-door phenomenon to be more serious than non-voluntary admission. In order to prevent unnecessary long-term hospitalization, the FGI results indicated that the government should proactively intervene in the admission/discharge process. In addition, the following improvement proposals were suggested : 1) functional activation of the mental health review board via the reinforcement of workers' expertise, 2) expansion of local mental health centers, and 3) undertake institutional changes related to the family-related issue of preferring hospitalization over a stay at a secure facility. CONCLUSION: For the government to improve the efficiency of the mental health service delivery system, it is necessary to improve institutional linkages, expand mental health infrastructure, and develop an integrated management system.
Community Mental Health Centers ; Community Networks ; Focus Groups ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Information Dissemination ; Insurance ; Mental Health Services* ; Mental Health* ; Psychiatric Rehabilitation ; Social Work ; Social Workers

Literature produced by the government and the private sector in the colonial era was reviewed to determine the knowledge of the people of colonial Chosun of mental illness and mental patients and the mental patient management system that they implemented or intended to implement. The results of this study show that the people of Chosun realized the need to sterilize mental patients because they considered mental patients very violent, dangerous and eugenically inferior and they believed that mental patients would eventually impede the prosperity of Chosun. The people of colonial Chosun had learned about the lifelong mental hygiene movement, which had knowledge of mental illness prevention. However, they also recognized that people who developed mental illness despite efforts to prevent such condition needed help from the modern system, especially from modern Western psychiatry. The primary responsibility to attend to mental patients was imposed on their family. The family had to understand the symptoms of mental illness according to the modern medical classification and how to deal with them. When the family could not afford to take care of its mentally ill family member due to the increase in the member's risk behavior such as frenzied-convulsive excitement, paranoia and delusion of jealousy, the family was also responsible for isolating him and connecting him with a mental hospital. The police and social workers were also responsible for observing and monitoring mental patients in their community and for connecting them with a mental hospital. The police made a list of mental patients within their area of jurisdiction and prohibited them from wandering based on the law. It was also considered desirable for mental patients who could not identify their family members to be sent to a mental hospital. Social workers were responsible for managing mental patient sanatoriums, and district commissioners sent to the police mental patients who had no family to look after them or who posed a threat to others, or else commissioned them to the government hospital. Thus, the final responsibility for mental patients was imposed on the modern Western medical team, because the district commissioners sent them to the police and the police sent them to the government mental hospital. Most educated people and government personnel in the colonial era thought modern Western psychiatry circles were responsible for mental patient management, and the Japanese empire enacted mental-health-related laws and made efforts to secure funds for the establishment of mental hospitals. As the literature at that time also show the position of the modern Western medical circle, their ambivalent attitude to mental patients must also be clarified to interpret the modern approach to treating mental patients in colonial Chosun. In this context, a research on historical figures in Japanese psychiatry, a study on the specific treatment methods used by the modern Western psychiatric team in the colonial era and their effects, and the extension of the subject period for such researches are suggested.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Delusions ; Eugenics ; Financial Management ; Hospitals, Psychiatric ; Humans ; Jealousy ; Jurisprudence ; Mental Health ; Mentally Ill Persons ; Paranoid Disorders ; Police ; Private Sector ; Risk-Taking ; Social Work

PURPOSE: This study aims to assess the effects of psychosocial work environment and self-efficacy on stress, depression, and burn-out among office workers. METHODS: Survey data were collected from 331 office workers who worked in one workplace from April 10 to 30, 2012. The impact of psychosocial work environment and self-efficacy on stress, depression, and burn-out was analyzed with hierarchical multiple regression using SAS version 9.3. RESULTS: Work-family conflicts and emotional demands were identified as main factors influencing mental health. Other work environment factors influencing mental health were role clarity for stress, possibilities for development, meaning-of work, social support-from supervisors and job insecurity for depression, and social community at work for burn-out. Self-efficacy was correlated with most psychosocial work environment and factor with independent influence on stress and depression. The final models including general characteristics, psychosocial work environment, and self-efficacy accounted for 34%, 44%, and 36% for stress, depression, and burn-out respectively. CONCLUSION: To promote mental health in office workers, there is a need to decrease work-family conflicts and emotional demands and to improve work organization and job contents, social support, and self-efficacy.
Depression ; Mental Health ; Social Work

Recently it is becoming socially controversy about Hansen's disease patient's registration system that was considered as the reasonable and best system in the past. Medically, it is naturally to make the patient's medical record(medial registration), including patient's detail profile, patient's family history, or other informations acquired form medical examination process for the clinical judgement and the best result of treatment. And that is necessary to government authorities that made the budget to provide the free medical and social service to Hansen's disease patients, but that is worry about the drain of personal information and the use of basic data to control. Therefore, we have to need to do enough examination between patient with leprologist, sociologist, government authorities and patients about this and advance this by reasonable system to everybody.
Budgets ; Humans ; Leprosy* ; Social Work

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the level and variation of job stress according to social welfare organizations and work conditions among social workers in Seoul. METHODS: For this survey, a self-reported questionnaire was administrated to 1,000 social workers working in organizations for social welfare practice in Seoul. A total of 432 completed questionnaires were received (43.2% response rate). RESULTS: Social workers working in welfare organizations for the aged had higher job stress in the areas of job demand, insufficient job control and lack of reward than those in other welfare organizations. In addition, higher job stress was found in those in charge of both service and administrational work, without regular time for rest, working over 10 hours, in the frontline and senior grade. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the importance of guaranteeing regular time for breaks in the work schedule and of considering the service and administrational work ratio in job arrangement in order to alleviate stress of social workers.
Appointments and Schedules ; Questionnaires ; Reward ; Seoul* ; Social Welfare* ; Social Work*

Obesity is a multi-factorial disease that results from a combination of genetic, biological, psychological, behavioral, and social factors. In addition, obesity causes physical, emotional, psychological, and social problems, and therefore a variety of factors and issues in the treatment of obesity must be considered. Behavioral Modification and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are effective in the treatment of obesity with multidimensional problems.
Cognitive Therapy ; Humans ; Obesity ; Social Problems ; Social Work

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions regarding the care of individual patients. This concept has gained popularity recently, and its applications have been steadily expanding. Nowadays, the term "evidence-based" is used in numerous situations and conditions, such as evidence-based medicine, evidence-based practice, evidence-based health care, evidence-based social work, evidence-based policy, and evidence-based education. However, many anesthesiologists and their colleagues have not previously been accustomed to utilizing EBM, and they have experienced difficulty in understanding and applying the techniques of EBM to their practice. In this article, the author discusses the brief history, definition, methods, and limitations of EBM. As EBM also involves making use of the best available information to answer questions in clinical practice, the author emphasizes the process of performing evidence-based medicine: generate the clinical question, find the best evidence, perform critical appraisal, apply the evidence, and then evaluate. Levels of evidence and strength of recommendation were also explained. The author expects that this article may be of assistance to readers in understanding, conducting, and evaluating EBM.
Education ; Evidence-Based Medicine* ; Evidence-Based Practice ; Humans ; Social Work

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study is to define the attributable factors related to the marital satisfaction of the professional airmen working for a commercial airlines. METHODS: Data was collected from the all professional civil airline pilots by using self-administrative questionnaire during the three months(2000. 1. 3 - 3. 31). The response rate was 95.2%(472). RESULTS: First, there were statistically significant differences in marital satisfaction by type of religion, in sexual satisfaction by type of housing, work duration, and flying hours. However, there were no significant variables in communication. Second, communication, sexual satisfaction, and number of female kids, and work duration were significantly correlated to marital satisfaction. There was significant correlation between sexual satisfaction and communication, marital years, and work duration. There was also statistical correlation among marital years, number of male kids, female kids, and total number of kids, work duration, and flying hours. Third, communication was the most significant attributable variable, and following sexual satisfaction related to marital satisfaction. CONCLUSION: It is intended that these finding will contribute to assisting the social work practices. It is necessary for the aircrew to develop communication skill to provide a happy marital life. Future research needs to study various methods and psychosocial factors involving quality of marital life for the Korean aircrew.
Diptera ; Female ; Housing ; Humans ; Male ; Psychology ; Social Work ; Surveys and Questionnaires

Recently, the Korean Neuropsychiatric Association began trying to revise the name "Department of Psychiatry" to a more user-friendly name, from possibilities including "Department of Mental Health Medicine" and "Department of Mental Health Promotion," in the hope of increasing its public accessibility and providing more comprehensive public services. There is an ever-increasing need to extend mental health services, via a more active promotion of positive mental health, and to move toward preventive strategies rather than confining mental health service efforts to the traditional treatment of mental illnesses. However, much work is needed to define the construct of "mental health" and to detail ways of promoting it. Defining how psychiatrists can, from an organizational or an individual perspective, practice medicine that promotes mental health, is an urgent issue. In this study, we review the determinants of mental health and the historical development of mental health promotion paradigms. We also attempt to provide the current evidence-based approaches, including the cost-effectiveness of interventions, as they apply to mental health promotion concepts and principles.
Health Promotion ; Mental Health ; Mental Health Services ; Psychiatry ; Social Work

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to identify needs and barriers that cancer patients experience with returning to work (RTW) by analyzing posts of the patients on the Internet. METHODS: Posts of online communities of the cancer patients related to RTW were collected using key words from Jan. 2004 to Dec. 2017. PFNet and NodeXL were utilized to visualize intellectual interchanges of the keywords. Additional content analysis of the posts was then conducted to specify informational needs related to RTW. RESULTS: There were 996 posts and 6394 responses related to RTW. A total of 163 and 129 keywords were found for posts and responses respectively. Posts were categorized into four groups by network analysis: 1) cancer diagnosis and treatment; 2) changing working status after cancer diagnosis; 3) concerns about RTW during cancer treatment; 4) balance of work and life after cancer. Responses were grouped into similar themes but most of them were empathetic or encouraging messages. CONCLUSION: Cancer patients posted various concerns and needs in relation to RTW on the online communities. At the same time, they expressed difficulties to obtain information and resources about RTW both on and off line. Further studies would be necessary to develop appropriate intervention for helping cancer patients to return to work.
Diagnosis ; Humans ; Internet ; Return to Work ; Social Networking ; Survivors