Our object for this study is to identify the trends of psychiatric disability reports by contemporary Korean psychiatrists. We analyzed the 220 reports which were sent to the courts in Seoul from 1996 to 1999.
The important results are as followings.
1) Almost all of the reports were written by the university hospital psychiatrists.
2) 58% of them were evaluated on hospitalization while 42% as an out patient.
3) The average range of hospital days for disability evaluation was 8-21 days(83%).
4) Only 70% of them used the ICD-10 diagnostic term.
5) Most common diagnoses were post-traumatic stress disorder(45%) and postconcussional disorder(17%).
6) Only 35% of them received psychiatric treatment between accident and disability evaluation.
7) The laboratory tests for disability evaluation were clinical psychological test(80%), brain MRI(70%), EEG(55%), SPECT(32%), etc.
8) Only 10% of them used the objective data for evaluating the previous illness status.
9) The trend of determination for type of disability were permanent disability(49%), temporary(41%), both of permanent and temporary(4%).
10) The impairment rates in the temporary disability were 11-20%(48%), 21-30%(30%), etc.
11) The periods of the temporary disability were 13-24 months(28%), 49-60 months(22%), etc.
12) The impairment rates in permanent disability were widely ranged between below 10% and 100%.
13) They usually used the item VII, IX, VIII of McBride book in order.
14) They decided the need of personal helper in 11%.
15) The impairment rates of the individuals with temporary disabilities were higher in no organic diagnoses group than organic diagnoses group.
16) The impairment rates in permanent disability in organic diagnosis group (43.9%) is higher than non organic diagnosis group(19.8%).
17) The patients with organic personality disorder received psychiatric treatment most frequently, those with mild cognitive disorder did least frequently.
18) Postconcussional disorders and posttraumatic stress disorders were highly rated as temporary disability.
19) The need of personal helper was rejected in the individuals with postconcussional disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.
20)The impairment rates of the individuals with temporary disability on hospitalization were higher(25.2%) than those on outpatient.
21) The use of temporary disability were 20% in 1996 and 40's% each in 1997, 1998, 1999.
We concluded that the rational impairment rates for the individuals with psychiatric disability should be agreed among psychiatrists.
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