The purpose of this study was to investigate the pathways of health care seeking by the psychiatric patients at a well-defined rural area in Korea. Among 1,295 patients diagnosed to have mental disorders by ICD-9 in a year, all the psychotic
patients(184 in number) and randomly selected 15% of nonpsychotic patients(162 in number) were selected as subjects of this study. Thirteen well-trained interviewers collected the data using semi-structured interview instrument developed by the
authors.
Two hundred nine patients(60.4%) fully responded to the interviews. As for psychotic patients, 28.8% used only psychiatric services, and the first visits for help were psychiatrists, general practitioners, pharmacists, asylums and oriental herb
medicine
in the order of decreasing frequency. Only 32.1% of nonpsychotic patients used mental health specialties during the course of their illness, and the most common first visits for care were general practitioners(59%) followed by pharmacists(17%)
and
psychiatrists(15%). Majority(64.5%) of schizophrenic patients visited psychiatrist first, while 64.1% of affective psychosis patients visited general practitioners and pharmacists first. The forty percent of neurotic patients(ICD-0 300) visited
general
practitioners only for their health care.
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