The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of school entrance examination on an adolescent's mental disorder, and to secure effective measures to cope with school entrance test stress syndrome.
For the analysis of this study, 318 adolescents were chosen, who were admitted to th Department of Psychiatry in Pildong Hospital and Yongsan Hospital, Chung Ang University medical Center from January 1981 to December 1991. They consisted of 36
examinees with little stress for school entrance examination, 132 examinees with school entrance test stress, and 150 adolescents with general mental disorder.
Data were processed by SPSS/PC+ Program and were statistically analysed by chi-square test and F-test.
@ES The results were as follows:
@EN 1. The rate of adolescents among the total psychiatric in-patients was 15.3%, and the rate of examinees among the total adolescent psychiatric in-patients was 16.7%, Among examinees, 78.6% were admitted due to school entreance test stress.
2. In the correlative analysis between social changes and annual rates of hospitalzation among adolescent psychiatric in-patients, there were some characteristic features, such as the increasing tendency of the numbers of adolescent psychiatric
in-patients annually, and the more increased number of hospitalization in younger and female group. Yet, in recent years, the proportion of adolescent cases were decreased. These findings suggested that the rates of the adolescent mental
disorders
were
higher in the social atmosphere of a political turmoil, while these rates were lower in the period of educational and economical stability.
3. The clinical manifestations showed that the examinee group suffered from more neurotic disorders, more frequent complaints of depressive symptoms, more somatization and more interpersonal sensitivity than the control group. Also, the former
group
experienced more serious psycho-social stress in school or social life than the latter group.
4. The examiness' mental disorders were frequently initiated or exacervated due to under-achievement of their school performance, obsessive compulsive personality traits, an excessive top class complex, or parental over-compensation mechanism.
In
the
subtypes of school entrance test stress syndrome, the examinees showed more melancholic manifestaions such as the emptiness types, the sulmp types, or the despair types than the control group.
5. The study showed that in the spring semester(of each year), more examinees were accompanied by their fathers when they were admitted to open ward than the control group. their improvement was quicker, their hospitalization was shorter and
consequently they were discharged from the hospital more quickly than the control group. the examinees were given more anti-psychotics or anti-anxiety drug, but they experienced less psychotherapy than the control group.
6. In comparison with the control group, the examinees were shown to use the somatization more frequently as a device of resistance to the hospital's therapeutic milieu. Against this resistance it was effective to try supportive psychotherapy
such
as
reassurance and clarification or sedation. Also, against the parental resistance, extinction technique such as observation or indifference was proved to be more effective than the direct attack technique which tried to eliminate the morbid
symbiotic
relationship between parents and children.
|