It has been the author´s experience for long a time that patients or their family used to ask about what would be the causes of patients´ mental illness, whenever they came to clinic for psychiatric consultation. Sometimes, they try themselves to explain what they think might have contributed to the etiology of patients´ illness. It could be seen that they often relate the causes of their psychiatric problems-with their financial difficulties, family troubles and social problems while therapist, in contrast, view predisposing factors as the more important contributing factors to mental disorders.
The author viewed on the perceptions of illness etiology by psychiatric patients, employing struc-
Lured data from a questionaire schedule. The said. pie consisited of 70 neuroses and 70 psychoses cases, total 140 patients, who were examined and treated at the out-patient clinic and in-patient service, department of psychiatry, Busan National University Medical College, from November, 1975 to March, 1976. The patients´ sex distribution, age distribution, educational level and marital status are shown in table I , table I , table I and table IV, respectively. The various life difficulties, grouped into six categories (economic, family and social problems during childhood and adulthood) were questioned to determine the contributing factors. Neurosis patients´ reponses to 36 questionaire items, in percents are shown in table V. Psychosis patients´ responses to 36 questionaire items, in percents are shown in table 1. Patients´ percept-ions of illness according to the number of life difficulties felt to have contributed to illness are shown in table If.-
The briefly. summarized results are follows:
1. In general, it was noticed that they checked experiencing adulthood life difficulties and felt those contributed to their illness more frequently than childhood life difficulties.
2. Among all types of problem items family worries, monetary worries and occupational worries were most frequently -reported and listed as responsible for their illness.
3. For all categories neuroses group selected more problem items and considered to have contributed to their illness more often than psychoses group.
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