Five Months Follow-up Study of School-based Crisis Intervention for Korean High School Students Who Experienced a Peer Suicide

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and complicated grief in Korean high school students who experienced a peer suicide. METHODS: A total of 956 students were included in the statistical analysis. One week after a peer suicide, a school-based crisis intervention program was conducted. The cohort was followed-up at one week and five months after a peer suicide. The program consists of screening tests, educational sessions, and further interview with psychiatric specialists for the selected group. Screening tests were conducted for all students to measure the Child Report of Post-traumatic Symptoms (CROPS), the post-traumatic stress symptoms (The University of California at Los Angeles post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] reaction index; UCLA-PTSD-RI), the anxiety symptoms (The Korean-Beck Anxiety Inventory; K-BAI), the depressive symptoms (The Korean-Beck Depression Inventory-II; K-BDI-II), and the complicated grief reaction (The Inventory of Complicated Grief; ICG). For statistical analysis, the SPSS Statistics 21.0 program was used. RESULTS: At baseline and five months follow-ups, 8.6% and 2.9% of the students showed post-traumatic stress symptoms. At five months follow-up, there was a statistically significant decline in the post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression, and complicated grief among the ‘trauma group.’ A higher proportion of the female students showed post-traumatic stress symptoms after the incident of peer suicide than the male students. CONCLUSION: School-based crisis intervention helps improvement of trauma-related symptoms. It might be an effective way to prevent suicide spreading among students by alleviating trauma-related symptoms.

A Trend of Drug Use in Inpatients with Bipolar Disorder: Comparing 2009-2012 with 1998-2001 in One University Hospital / 대한정신약물학회지

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to monitor changes of prescription trends for bipolar disorder in inpatient settings in one university hospital. METHODS: A retrospective chart review was performed and data of 188 cases (2009-2012) and 118 cases (1998-2001) with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder were collected. Data on demographic variables, duration of hospitalization, kinds of psychotropic medications and the patterns of prescription over each four-year period were analyzed. RESULTS: The proportion of patients with manic episode was decreased, whereas those of mixed and depressive episodes were increased. The use of lithium was decreased with the increased use of valproate. Increased use of lamotrigine in depressive episode was prominent. The use of combination treatment with mood stabilizers and antipsychotics was almost same level in both periods. The use of typical antipsychotics was significantly decreased and that of atypical antipsychotics was increased. Especially, the use of quetiapine showed great increase. In bipolar depression, the use of antidepressant was increased. CONCLUSION: This study showed significant changes have occurred in the prescription patterns in patients with bipolar disorder in the last four years. These results seem to reflect the accumulating evidence-based data for the treatment of bipolar disorder, and will provide the useful information to clinicians in practical situations.