Comparative Analysis of Health Behaviors, Health Status, and Medical Needs among One-Person and Multi-Person Household Groups: Focused on the Ageing Population of 60 or More

Background

Among the issues caused by the increase of one-person households the health problems and primary medical needs of one-person elderly households among the issues with the increase in one-person households is very important. The purpose of this study was to identified health care needs and problems of one-person elderly households by comparing health behavior, health status, disease prevalence rate, and medical needs to one-person elderly households and multi-person households.

Methods

Data were obtained from the 2017 Community Health Survey. In this study, 66,211 people who were over 60 years of age without missing variables were included in the final analysis.

Results

One-person households showed poorer overall health behaviors, such as nutritional behaviors, exercise behaviors, drinking and smoking behaviors, and poorer subjective and objective health status than multi-person households. Furthermore, albeit the high requirement of medical services for mental health outcomes such as suicide attempts, the rate of not receiving services was also high indicating high barriers to receive and access health care.

Conclusion

Comprehensive and direct comparison of health and medical factors revealed the medical vulnerability and unmet needs in terms of health promotion in the single-person elderly households. These results can be applied as the basic information to understand the needs and medical problems of these risk groups by primary medical doctors who predominantly treat single-person elderly households and can also be used as basic data for policy development in order to solve these unmet medical care needs.

Risk Factors of Discharged Against Medical Advice among Adolescents Self-inflicted Injury and Attempted Suicide in the Korean Emergency Department

Suicide is a leading cause of death among Korean adolescents. Many suicide attempting adolescents often are discharged against medical advice in the emergency department. The aim of the present study was to determine the risk factors for discharge against medical advice (DAMA) after self-inflicted injury or attempted suicide in the emergency department. We extracted data on adolescents (10-19 yr old) from the national emergency department information system; we used data from 2007 and 2011. A total of 6,394 adolescents visited EDs after self-inflicted injury or attempted suicide. Among these patients, the median age was 17 yr (Interquatile range, 15-18 yr), 83.2% were between 15-19 yr of age, and 63.3% were female. Poisoning was the most common method of attempted suicide, while hanging and fall were the most common methods of fatality. The rate of DAMA from the ED was 22.8%. Independent risk factors for DAMA included female gender (odds ratio [OR], 1.49), older age adolescents (OR, 1.96), residence in a metropolitan/large city area (OR, 1.49), and discharge at night (OR, 1.38). These risk factors should be considered in establishing management and counseling plans for patients discharged against medical advice by community services and EDs.

Psychological and social factors affecting Internet searches on suicide in Korea: a big data analysis of Google search trends

PURPOSE

The average mortality rate for death by suicide among OECD countries is 12.8 per 100000, and 33.5 for Korea. The present study analyzed big data extracted from Google to identify factors related to searches on suicide in Korea.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Google search trends for the search words of suicide, stress, exercise, and drinking were obtained for 2004-2010. Analyzing data by month, the relationship between the actual number of suicides and search words per year was examined using multi-level models.

RESULTS

Both suicide rates and Google searches on suicide in Korea increased since 2007. An unconditional slope model indicated stress and suicide-related searches were positively related. A conditional model showed that factors associated with suicide by year directly affected suicide-related searches. The interaction between stress-related searches and the actual number of suicides was significant.

CONCLUSION

A positive relationship between stress- and suicide-related searches further confirmed that stress affects suicide. Taken together and viewed in context of the big data analysis, our results point to the need for a tailored prevention program. Real-time big data can be of use in indicating increases in suicidality when search words such as stress and suicide generate greater numbers of hits on portals and social network sites.