A Comparison of Physical Health, Anxiety and Depression between the Dan-Jeon Breathing Trained group and non-trained group

Hyun, Kyung Sun; Kang, Hyun Sook; Ahn, Dong Hwan

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the physical health, anxiety and depression of the Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group with those of a non-trained group and to analyze the relationship between the training period of Dan-Jeon Bre athing method and physical health, anxiety, and depression. The number of people in the Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group over 3 months was 149 and in the non-trained group 142. Data were collected from August to October 1999. As tools, 35 physical symptom questions were chosen from The Cornell Medical Index modified by Nam(1965) and from the Symptom Checklist-90-Revision(SCL-90-R) by Kim(1984); 10 questions on anxiety and 13 questions on depression were used in the study. The statistics of the study were gathered by using SPSS Window; the analysis was made by applying x(2)-test, t-test, Pearson correlation, ANOVA and Scheffe tests. The results were as follows. 1. The Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group had lower physical symptom score and showed less anxiety and depression than the non-trained group, which supported the 1st, 2nd, 3rd hypotheses. 2. The longer the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing, the lower the physical symptom score, which supports the 4th hypothesis, but the 5th and, 6th hypotheses were not supported because anxiety and depression did not get lower as the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing got longer. 3. The physical symptom score, anxiety and depression that were made by the general characteristics of Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group were analyzed. As a result, the physical symptom score of women was greater than that of men. Physical symptoms score and the rate of anxiety and depression were different by education levels. The degree of anxiety was different by age. Those who have a religion have a higher physical symtoms score than people who have no religion. There was no difference in physical health score, anxiety and depression according to marital status, economic status and occupations. The results suggest that the physical and mental health status of Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group is better than that of the non-trained group. Physical symptoms scores gets lower as the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing gets longer which results in the improvement of physical health status.