정신과 환자의 의료추구 행태에 관한 예비적 연구 一 사례분석을 중심으로 一

A Preliminary Study about Health Care Seeking Behavior of Psychiatric Patients

The authors studied 3 psychiatric. Patient who had various experiences of health service utilization during the course of illness. We inquired about patient’ s own subjective explanations and emotional responses and their families’ regarding mental illness and the process of their health care utilization, and then investigated various determinants affecting their health care seeking behavior. The first case, a woman patient with episodes of psychosis, is an example in that her families shamanistic concepts of mental illness, her mother’ s experience against psychiatric patients, the difference between the expectations of the folk treatment and the psychiatric treatment and her mother’ s experience of her own mental hospitalization had influenced the selection of health services. In the second case of schizophrenic patient, the type and severity of symptoms, family’ s socioeconomic status, place of residence, proximity to particular treatment resources and father’ s concept and attitude toward mental illness seemed to be determinants of health care seeking behavior. In the third case with adjustment disorder with depressed mood, the nature of patient’ s social network and lay referral system played a major role and furthermore she experienced the exorcism in the middle of psychiatric therapy on the advice of her sister. We found the sociocultural and sociopsychological factors affecting health care seeking behavior of psychiatric patients, eventually their mental health, and hence it seems to need the continuous study for this direction by the more advanced method, patient