• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.183-189
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• 2009

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to evaluate community mental health professionals and hospital workers attitude and awareness towards suicide. Methods : This study investigated 264 community mental health professionals and 228 hospital workers. SOQs (Suicidal Opinion Questionnaires) were used from July 2007 to September 2007. After a factor analysis for the attitude towards suicide, the items on ethics, mental illness, religion, risk, and motivation were included in the subsequent analysis. Results : There were significant differences in the attitude towards suicide according to religion, age, educational background, the marriage status, the economic position, and different professional licenses. Hospital workers' view was different from the community workers'. The hospital workers judged that suicide was due to mental illness, and suicide was high for the people in a special environment and who lacked motivation, which caused them to fall in a dangerous situation. For the lower educational group, they thought that suicide was attributable to mental illness. The awareness for suicide was significantly higher in the group with a postgraduate education, unmarried people, mental health professionals and the persons who had concern and experience with suicide. The factors that had an influence on the awareness of suicide were the items of mental illness, religion, risk and motivational factors. Conclusions : This study suggested that the factors to increase the awareness and attitude for suicide were the experience of increased education and case management of suicide. Therefore, education dealing with suicide and reinforcement of crisis management programs should be developed.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.31-43
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• 1973

The trend in modern nursing is toward the performance of comprehensive nursing care. Psychiatric nursing emphasizes education which enables the nurse to understand the underlying difficulties being expressed through a wide range of emotions and through practice to be more adept in her selection of a manner of approach which best meets the needs of a given situation. Presently, in Korea, there is nothing in the literature regarding evaluation of the effect of psychiatric nursing education on the attitudes of nurses towards mental illness and mentally ill patients. This stud!1 was attempted in order to understand 1) some of the problems in psychiatric nursing education 2) some of tile factors which affect the attitudes of nurses towards mental illness and mental patients. A questionnaire, a Korean translation of the "Opinions about Mental illness Scale" by Cohen and Stranding, 1962, was administered to 188 nonpsychiatric registered nurses employed in Yonsei University Hospital (Y. Hospital) and Seoul National University Hospital (S. Hospital) located in the city of Seoul. All of the nurses were directly involved with adult patient care. They graduated from various nursing schools. The data was collected during the period of October 2 to October 16,1972. The age, educational background , marital status, type of previous psychiatric experience, experience as a graduate nurse and close personal relationship with someone who was a psychiatric patient were compared with the O.M.I. scores. The mean and standard errors for each of the comparison groups were computed and tile relationships calculated by a t-test. The results of the study are summarized as follow: 1. There is no significant difference between the age of the nurses and their attitudes toward mental illness and mental patients. 2. There is no significant difference between the. educational backgrounds of the nurses and their attitudes toward mental illness and mental patients. 3. There is a significant difference in the nurses ′student psychiatric nursing experience and their attitudes towards mental illness and mental patients for the nurses in 5. Hospital only. The nurses who had 3-4 week of student psychiatric nursing experience had a significantly higher mean score for Benevolence (factor B) than nurses whose student psychiatric experience had been less than 1 Ivcek (P<0.05). The nurses who had 1-2 weeks, 3-4 weeks and more than 4 weeks of student psychiatric nursing experience had significantly higher mean scores for Interpersonal Ethology (factor E) than nurses whose student psychiatric had been less than 1 week (p<0.05), 4. There is a significant difference in the nurses′student psychiatric nursing experience by types of institution and their attitudes towards mental illness and mental patients for S. Hospital nurses only. The nurses who had their student psychiatric nursing experience in the government psychiatric hospitals recorded significantly higher mean score for Authoritarianism (factor A) than nurses who had their. experience in private psychiatric hospitals (p<0.05). 5. There is no significant difference in the nurses′psychiatric nursing experience as a graduate nurse and their attitudes toward mental illness and mental patients. 6. There is no significant difference in the nature and variety of the nurses′experience as a graduate nurse and their attitude toward mental illness and mental patients. 7. There is no significant difference in the presence or absence of a close personal relationship with a mentally ill person and the nurses′attitude toward mental illness and mental patients. 8. There is no significant difference in the nurses′ marital status and their attitude toward mental illness and mental patients. 9. There is no significant difference between the nurses who were employed ill S. and Y. hospitals and their attitudes towards mental illness and mental patients. Major suggestion for further study was to have more larger and wider scale research for establishing of the reliability and validity of the Korean translation of the O.H.I. Scale.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.84-94
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was done to investigate community attitudes towards people with mental illness and to mental health services. Methods: From August to October of 2006, 474 citizens of Siheung city were asked to give demographic data and their personal attitude toward mental illness and mental health services. Results: The residents of Siheung community showed slightly negative attitudes, with a mean opinion about mental illness score of $93.38{\pm}17.29$. According to the study, health professionals and citizens showed a positive attitude to the establishment of day care centers and residential facilities (62.2% and 55.4% respectively). Civil servants showed negative attitudes (40.4%). There were significant differences in attitudes according to gender, age, education level, occupation, religion, and income. Positive attitudes were found for health professionals and negative attitudes for civil servants. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate a need to provide public information and education for civil servants, and for those who have negative attitudes, in particular, men, people in the younger age group, who have lower education levels, who are Buddhists, monthly renters, who have a monthly income below 1 million won, who have no children and no experience with people who have a mental illness.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2022

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting burnout of nurses caring for people with mental illness in general hospital wards. Methods: This study conducted a survey targeting 186 nurses in general wards with more than one year of clinical experience working at three general hospitals in Seoul, Korea. The collected data were analyzed using t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and multiple linear regression analysis with SPSS 21.0. Results: The factors influencing burnout were nursing work stress (β=.30, p<.001), attitude towards people with mental illness (β=-.25, p<.001), religion (β=-.21, p=.001), psychiatric nursing competency (β=-.16, p=.016), experience of nursing for people with mental illness (β=.14, p=.023), and gender (β=.14, p=.026), explaining 33.5% of the total variance (F=16.53, p<.001). Conclusion: The findings suggest that it is necessary to develop and apply an education program to lower nurses' work stress, to create positive attitude towards people with mental illness, and to enhance psychiatric nursing competency for prevention and mitigation of burnout of nurses caring for people with mental illness.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.250-263
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• 2019

This study aimed to improve the public perception of people with mental illness by suggesting the need for public efforts and proposing specific plans. Demographic differences in the attitudes towards mental illness, the need of public service announcements to improve public perception of mental illness, and the current and expected situation of each advertising medium were analyzed, and plans to improve the advertising were proposed. Three mental illnesses that are possible to recover from through treatment-depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD), and panic disorder-were examined primarily, and the general public residing in Seoul and the capital area were surveyed. A comparison of the respondents' attitudes towards people with mental illness showed that there were significant differences in their attitudes with respect to gender, marital status, age, and family history. On the other hand, there was no significant difference with respect to religion, monthly income, or academic background. Most of the respondents recognized that public efforts to improve the public perceptions of mental illness, i.e., efforts through the mass media, were necessary and should be intensified though television, Internet, radio, billboard, and transport advertising. Based on the above findings, this study highlights the necessity for advertising through mass media for positive public perceptions of people with mental illness and proposes plans to intensify the advertising, focusing on social, organizational, and individual levels.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.90-97
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• 2012

Objectives: While there have been many quantitative studies on the public's attitude towards mental illnesses, it is hard to find quantitative study which focused on the contextual effect on the public's attitude. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that affect the public's beliefs and attitudes including contextual effects. Methods: We analyzed survey on the public's beliefs and attitudes towards mental illness in Korea with multi-level analysis. We analyzed the public's beliefs and attitudes in terms of prejudice as an intermediate outcome and social distance as a final outcome. Then, we focused on the associations of factors, which were individual and regional socioeconomic factors, familiarity, and knowledge based on the comparison of the intermediate and final outcomes. Results: Prejudice was not explained by regional variables but was only correlated with individual factors. Prejudice increased with age and decreased by high education level. However, social distance controlling for prejudice increased in females, in people with a high education level, and in regions with a high education level and a high proportion of the old. Therefore, social distance without controlling for prejudice increased in females, in the elderly, in highly educated people, and in regions with a high education and aged community. Conclusions: The result of the multi-level analysis for the regional variables suggests that social distance for mental illness are not only determined by individual factors but also influenced by the surroundings so that it could be tackled sufficiently with appropriate considering of the relevant regional context with individual characteristics.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.59-82
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• 2008

This study investigated the effect of spouse attitude of psychiatric patients on relapse. The research was based on the concept that spouses' attitudes toward mental illness influences relapse, mediated by marital relationship and social adaptation. Data were collected from 102 of the psychiatrically disordered who were married, and analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling to validate causal paths and mediator effects of the variables. The marital relationship was shown to act as a mediator between spouse attitude and social adaptation, while social adaptation showed a complete mediation effect between marital relationship and relapse. Thus, spouse attitude towards mental illness was shown to have a statistically meaningful effect on relapse indirectly and through sequential mediation effect of marital relationship and social adaptation. This study proposes the facilitation of counseling and training programs to improve the marital relationships of psychiatric patients. The emphasis is on the educational program for the spouses to improve their knowledge of mental illness.