A Psychiatric Study on Hahn

Min, Sung Kil; Lee, Jong Sub; Han, Jung Ok

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
This study aimed at identifying the etiological background, symptomatic expressions, defense styles and coping strategies related to hahn. METHOD: The subjects were given a questionnaire for demographic data, life experiences and psychological and physical symptoms, Bond's questionnaire of defense style, and Weisman's scale for coping strategies and scales for severity of hahn and hwabyung. The subjects were 110 normal healthy adults and 151 patients with neurotic disorders, diagnosed with ICD-9.
RESULTS
More vivid hahn was found in the married women, the less educated, and those from a low socio-economic state. In the area of etiological life experiences, hahn is significantly related with an unhappy and frustrated marital life, unsatisfactory filial Piety, Poor family background, poverty, little education, a hard life since childhood, betrayal, failure in business, personality problems, injustice in society and resignation to fate. Hahn, unresolved and accumulated, was believed to cause various psychological and physical illnesses. In many cases hahn was corhad been dealt with by simple suppression and being dependent on religious faith or sharing and communicating with people. More people considered hahn as one of the etiologies of hwabyung, a chronic anger syndrome. Hahn of patients with hwabyung was more serious than that of those without hwabyung. Symptoms of hahn were - in addition to various symptoms of depression, anxiety and other neurotic conditions or somatization - a mass in the epigastrium, sighing, something pushing-up in the chest, paranoid ideas and hyprochondria sis nor hygochondriacal ideas. On the other hand, hypersensitivity and irritability were less significant. Defense styles and coping strategies related with hahn were somatization, splitting-projection, passive-aggressiveness, incorporation, primitive idealization, stimulus reduction, self-pity and shared-concerns and dependency.
CONCLUSION
These results suggest that hahn is an unique emotional condition which is characterized by culture-related somatization symptoms, paranoid ideas and hypochondriasis, in addition to general neurotic symptoms such as depression and anxiety and related somatic symptoms.