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KMID : 0377619930580110733
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Korean Jungang Medical Journal
1993 Volume.58 No. 11 p.733 ~ p.739
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Psychiatric and Social Characteristics Among Urban Homeless Adults
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Abstract
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Selected psychiatric and social characteristics of 485 homeless adults from Samyoung Institution and Mental Hospital in Incheon city were assessed to investigate the present problems of community mental health. The subjects were categorized by duration of residence into short-term (below 1 year), long-term (1~3 years) and chronic accumulated subgroup (above 3 years). The average age of subjects was 40.85 years old, and sex ratio of male to female was 1.6: 1. Cases of short-term subgroup were 163 (33.6 %), those of long-term subgroup were 122 (25.1 %) and those of chronic accumulated subgroup were 200 (41.3 %). 45.8 % of the subjects were schizophrenia, 19.2 % organic brain syndrome, 13.6 % substance abuse and others had personality problems, mood disorders and/or chronic physical disability.
Male gender and history of previous psychiatric treatment had little relation to duration of residence. But education level, availability of relatives, diagnosis of subjects had significant effects to duration of residence.
About half of subjects were taking antipsychotic medications and average dosage was 271 mg of equivalent of chlorpromazine.
In authors´ survey the majority of the homeless are suffered from severe psychiatric illness and findings are discussed in relation to the need to conduct more systematic epidemiologic study for the homeless mentally ill.
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