A survey found that 7 out of 10 people with mental illness do not seek professional help or medical attention when they have suicidal thoughts, but instead seek solutions on their own.
On the 22nd, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the results of a ‘Survey on the Expansion of Support Services for Mentally Ill Patients and Their Families’ on the living conditions of mentally ill patients and their families, experiences using welfare services, and demand for necessary services.
This survey was conducted for approximately eight months from September last year to April this year, targeting 1,078 mentally ill patients and 995 of their family members.
As a result, it was found that people with mental illness had inadequate coping methods when they had suicidal thoughts. When they had suicidal thoughts, 77.1% thought about it alone, which was a lot of cases where they were exposed to danger. 20.6% received help from professional organizations, and 19.3% received help from their families.
In the event of a mental emergency, the most common source of help was family and relatives at 64.3% (multiple responses), followed by mental health and welfare centers and mental rehabilitation facilities at 61.6%, and doctors they knew at 22.3%.
Health awareness was also generally low. When asked about health awareness, 36.2% of the entire population responded that it was ‘good or very good,’ but only 23.9% of people with mental illness responded the same way.
Health care was also not properly implemented. When examining cases where there was no chronic disease, the overall national average was 58.3%, but the mentally ill were 44.3%, which was low. The smoking rate was also 26.5% for the mentally ill, which was higher than the national average of 17.0%. The drinking rate was also 22.1% for the mentally ill, and 13.4% for the entire population.
Among patients with mental illness, 18.1% did not go to the hospital even though they were sick, and the main reasons were fear and anxiety (32.8%) and inability to pay for hospital expenses (30.3%).
69.6% of people with mental illness believe that they can live in the community, but 60.1% of them have experienced discrimination. The percentage of people who have experienced bullying or violence from family or people around them reached 31.9%.
Among the families of mentally ill patients, 61.7% responded that the burden of caring for the patient was great. The biggest difficulty was the vague anxiety when the mentally ill patient was left alone after the death of the guardian (42.1%), the stress of continuous care for the mentally ill patient (34.1%), and the employment problem of the mentally ill patient (20.8%).
The diagnosis of patients cared for by family members of mentally ill patients was schizophrenia at 48.1%, depression at 20.1%, and bipolar affective disorder at 14.9%.
The experience of violence from patients was also found to be 57.5%. The types of violence were verbal and emotional violence at 47.8%, and physical violence at 33.9%.
The percentage of people who had considered suicide in the past year was 20.5%, and 51.0% of respondents said that the main reason for their suicidal thoughts was the burden of raising, caring for, and looking after a mentally ill patient.
The demand for support services desired by people with mental illness and their families was higher when they had experience using the service or were aware of it. In general, the demand for services from families was higher than that from people with mental illness.
Lee Hyung-hoon, the director of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Mental Health Policy Bureau, said, “Based on the results of this survey, we will continue to strengthen the mental emergency response system, such as operating a crisis intervention team to provide rapid assistance to families and patients with mental illness,” and “Starting next year, we will begin residential support services to help patients with mental illness become independent in the community, and we will strive to improve the lives and environments of patients with mental illness and their families.”
※If you need professional help due to difficult to talk about concerns such as depression, you can receive 24-hour professional counseling by calling the Suicide Prevention Hotline ☎1577-0199, Hope Line ☎129, Life Line ☎1588-9191, or Youth Line ☎1388.
(Seoul = News 1)
2024-08-23 06:11:53