Psychiatry in South Korea

Abstract

Abstract Background: Although the history of psychiatry has been relatively short, psychiatry has been progressively developed through Westernization to assimilate into the psychiatric practices and research of developed countries. Psychiatry in South Korea has followed the above-described rule. In this review, I am describing the picture of psychiatric practice in South Korea for the readership of the Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry. Methods: In this review, I am planning to introduce a brief history of psychiatry in South Korea first, to describe the current status of mental health-care services, and to highlight special programs to deal with special psychiatric issues in South Korea. Results: A three-layer hierarchical system (including [a] the Ministry of Health and Welfare, [b] the Metropolitan City or Province, as well as [c] the City, County, or District), has been organized in South Korea. With the complete revision of the Act on Mental Health and Welfare in 2016, the processes and requisites of psychiatric hospitalization or admission have been complicated. As a result, based on the Penrose hypothesis, deinstitutionalization has been regarded as one of the causative factors for “trans-institutionalization.” Thus, it has been suggested that the policies for the treatment and prevention of psychiatric persons should be controlled at a national level. South Korea has presented herself to have the highest suicide death rate in 2021 among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Hence, “Suicide CARE” has been originally developed as a gatekeeper program in Korea. Furthermore, the economically weak have undergone more severe psychiatric difficulties, even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, proactive care measures to secondary emotional reaction of the COVID-19 pandemic have been required in Korea. Finally, renaming the Korean terms for terminology in psychiatry, epilepsy, and schizophrenia has been done in an attempt to reduce stigma associated with persons of the mentally ill and denote more essential characteristics of mental health fields. Furthermore, it is expected that the detailed description of anger syndrome and fear of interpersonal relationship can enrich the cultural conceptualization of distress in the DSM-5. Conclusion: Despite existences of several problems of the mental health-care system, psychiatry has been progressively developed and steadily established its own originality in South Korea.