A Study on the Psychological Symptoms of Hospitalized Pneumoconiosis Patients: Comparison with pneumoconiosis Examinees, Coal Miners, and Other Manual Workers

Rhee, Kyung Young; Chung, Ho Keun

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of hospitalization and diagnosis of disease on the mental health of coal workers' pneumoconiosis patient. The study subjects were composed of four groups for comparison; hospitalized coal workers' pneumoconiosis, healthy coal miners, and railroad workers employed by government. About a hundred of respondents in each group were sampled by random. Mental health data were collected by symptom distress checklist 90 (SCL-90), and other characteristics were collected by interview with questionnaire administered trained interviewers in each respondents. Mental health dimension was classified into 9 dimensions; somatization, obsessive-compulsiveness, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostality, phobic anxiety, paranoid, psychosis. And as total index, global severity index, positive symptoms total, positive symptom distress index were also computed. As a result there is difference of mean score of 9 symptom dimensions among four groups. The mean score of the examinees of depth diagnosis of the impressed coal workers' pneumoconiosis is the highest score in all 9 symptom dimensions. However in the hospitalized coal workers' pneumoconiosis scores of somatization, depression, anxiety, and phobic anxiety were still higher than that of healthy coal miners. And other symptom dimensions were not different from that of healthy coal miners.