JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In South Korea, the psychiatric treatment gap is huge. Sociocultural context, such as stigma attached to mental illness, limit opportunities for professional help-seeking.

Objective:

This study uses TM of the internet to investigate barriers by age groups to receiving psychiatric treatment.

Methods:

A corpus of data was collected from web communities, social network services, and personal blogs on the internet from 1 January 2016 to 31 July 2019. Words frequently linked with psychiatry were collected by natural language processing. Words that may be associated with barriers to receiving psychiatric help were identified and categorized. Because the data from web communities could be classified approximately according to age, the analyses were arranged by age groups.

Results:

A total of 97,730,360 articles were identified for the period in question, among which 6,097,369 texts contained keywords relevant to psychiatry. Among words that were associated with ‘psychiatry,’ approximately 3,000 were selected based on their frequency of occurrence. Words associated with barriers to receiving psychiatric help were categorized into the following four groups: structural discrimination, public prejudice, low accessibility, and adverse drug effects. Structural discrimination was the greatest barrier (34%), followed by public prejudice (27.8%), adverse drug effects (18.6%), and cost/low accessibility (16.1%). Structural discrimination was the greatest barrier in the groups consisting of teenagers (51%), job seekers (64%), and young mothers (43%). However, in the seniors group, the greatest barrier was public prejudice (49%).

Conclusions:

Structural discrimination is the greatest barrier to receiving psychiatric help in Korea. Difference in the barriers, however, exists among age groups. As well as addressing structural issues for all, more tailored approaches may be required by generations to lower the gap.