OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to investigate the association between changes in brain volumes and memory task-based functional connectivity (FC) patterns in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to healthy controls (HCs). METHODS:This study employed voxel-based morphometry and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging using memory task to examine alterations in brain volume density and FC within and between relevant brain regions involved in memory processes such as encoding and retrieval. RESULTS:PTSD patients exhibited increased brain volumes in the right cerebellum (Cb) in the gray matter (GM) region compared to HCs. Analysis of FC patterns revealed that both groups exhibited similar connectivity patterns, but PTSD patients displayed higher and more extensive interregional connectivity relative to HCs. During the memory encoding process, PTSD patients exhibited higher FC linked to the Cb in the right postcentral gyrus, left precentral gyrus (PrCG), left orbito frontal gyrus (OFG), and superior frontal gyrus, while demonstrating lower connectivity in the right hippocampus. In the memory retrieval period, PTSD patients showed higher FC in the right middle frontal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus, left OFG, right inferior parietal gyrus, and right PrCG, along with lower FC in the right/left inferior frontal gyrus and right superior parietal gyrus. Additionally, a negative correlation was observed between PTSD symptom severity and local GM volumes in the right Cb. However, no significant correlation was found with FC. CONCLUSION:Our findings provide insights into the specific alterations in brain structure and connectivity associated with PTSD, contributing to a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms of PTSD.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the effectiveness of buspirone as an adjunctive therapy for alleviating anxiety symptoms in patients with depressive disorders who are already taking antidepressants. Methods: This was an open-label prospective multicenter non-interventional observational study conducted over 12 weeks. We enrolled 180 patients diagnosed with depressive disorders according to DSM-5 criteria and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) scores >= 18. Participants were already taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or serotoninnorepinephrine reuptake inhibitors and were prescribed adjunctive buspirone. Efficacy was assessed using HAMA, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), Clinical Global Impression Scale-Improvement, Clinical Global Impression Scale-Severity, Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS), and WHO-5 Well-Being Index. Results: The efficacy analysis included 161 patients. HAMA scores decreased significantly from 25.2 +/- 6.7 at baseline to 15.4 +/- 8.6 at 12 weeks (p < 0.001), whereas HAMD scores decreased from 19.4 +/- 4.6 to 12.7 +/- 5.7 (p < 0.001). WHO-5 and SDS scores showed significant improvements. The HAMA response rate was 39.1% and the remission rate was 13.7% at 12 weeks. Adverse drug reactions were reported in 3.7% of participants. Subgroup analyses showed no significant differences in treatment response based on buspirone dosage, baseline anxiety/depression severity, or benzodiazepine use. Conclusion: Adjunctive buspirone therapy effectively improved anxiety symptoms in depressed patients taking antidepressants, regardless of baseline symptom severity or buspirone dosage. The treatment was well-tolerated with few adverse events. Future studies using a control group are needed.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with abnormalities in the processing and regulation of emotion as well as cognitive deficits. This study evaluated the differential brain activation patterns associated with cognitive and emotional distractors during working memory (WM) maintenance for human faces between patients with PTSD and healthy controls (HCs) and assessed the relationship between changes in the activation patterns by the opposing effects of distraction types and gray matter volume (GMV). Twenty-two patients with PTSD and twenty-two HCs underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and event-related functional MRI (fMRI), respectively. Event-related fMRI data were recorded while subjects performed a delayed-response WM task with human face and trauma-related distractors. Compared to the HCs, the patients with PTSD showed significantly reduced GMV of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). For the human face distractor trial, the patients showed significantly decreased activities in the superior frontal gyrus and IFG compared with HCs (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). The patients showed lower accuracy scores and slower reaction times for the face recognition task with trauma-related distractors compared with HCs as well as significantly increased brain activity in the STG during the trauma-related distractor trial was observed (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). Such differential brain activation patterns associated with the effects of distraction in PTSD patients may be linked to neural mechanisms associated with impairments in both cognitive control for confusable distractors and the ability to control emotional distraction.

Objectives:This study aimed to investigate the correlation between the Comprehensive Attention Test, Korean-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Rating Scale-IV scores in children and adolescents with ADHD.Methods:Fifty-five children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD and not taking psychiatric medications were included in this retrospective study. A correlation analysis was performed.Results:Although simple visual and auditory selective attention have diagnostic value in traditional continuous performance tests, this study revealed that inhibition-sustained attention and interference-selective attention are also effective in evaluating ADHD. Furthermore, the correlation between the attention and intelligence test scores varied depending on the use of visual or auditory stimuli.Conclusion:The findings of this study contribute to clarifying our understanding of the cognitive characteristics of children and adolescents with ADHD and can be used in future research.

Purpose: Adolescent self-harm is a public health problem. Research suggests a link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and self-destructive behaviors. Few studies, however, have examined the effects of ACEs on self-harm among Asian adolescents. This study explored the association between lifetime ACEs and a history of self-harm among Korean children and adolescents in elementary, middle, and high schools.Methods: A cross-sectional, retrospective medical record review was conducted on a dataset of a national psychiatrist advisory service for school counselors who participated in the Wee Doctor Service from January 1 to December 31, 2020. The data were analyzed using multiple logistic regression to predict self-harm.Results: Student cases (n=171) were referred to psychiatrists by school counselors for remote consultation. Multiple logistic regression analyses revealed that the odds of self-harm were higher among high school students (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]=4.97; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.94-12.76), those with two or more ACEs (aOR=3.27; 95% CI=1.43-7.47), and those with depression (aOR=3.06; 95% CI=1.32-7.10).Conclusion: The study's findings provide compelling evidence that exposure to ACEs can increase vulnerability to self-harm among Korean students. Students with a history of ACEs and depression, as well as high school students, require increased attention during counseling. School counselors can benefit from incorporating screening assessment tools that include questions related to ACEs and depression. Establishing a systematic referral system to connect students with experts can enhance the likelihood of identifying self-harm tendencies and offering the essential support to prevent self-harm.

Abstract Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with cognitive and emotional dysregulation for inhibitory control, yet currently, there are no validated methods for dissociation between cognition and emotion regulation in patients with PTSD. Thus, this study evaluated the differential brain activation patterns associated with cognitive and emotional distractors during working memory (WM) maintenance for human faces between patients with PTSD and healthy controls (HCs) and assessed the relationship between changes in the activation patterns by the opposing effects of distraction types and gray matter volume (GMV). Twenty-four patients with PTSD and 24 HCs underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and event-related functional MRI (fMRI). PTSD symptoms were evaluated using the Clinically Administered PTSD Scale. Event-related fMRI data were recorded while subjects performed a delayed-response WM task with human face and trauma-related distractors. Compared to the HCs, the patients with PTSD showed significantly reduced GMV of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and significantly higher GMV of the inferior temporal gyrus (p < 0.05). In the delayed-response WM tasks, the patients showed significantly increased activities in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and middle temporal gyrus compared with HCs during a maintenance trial (p < 0.05). For the human face distractor trial, the patients showed significantly decreased activities in the superior frontal gyrus and IFG compared with HCs (p < 0.05). In addition, the patients showed lower scores and slower reaction times for the face recognition task with trauma-related distractors compared with HCs and showed significantly increased activities in the middle frontal gyrus and STG during the trauma-related distractor trial (p < 0.05). Differential brain activation patterns associated with the effects of distraction in PTSD patients may be linked to neural mechanisms with impairments in cognitive control for confusable distractors and in the ability to control emotional distraction.

The neural correlates for the effect of emotional distraction on working memory (WM) function in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have not been clearly identified. This study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effect of emotional distraction during WM maintenance in OCD patients and to determine if the frontoparietal region was involved during the task. Patients with OCD tried to maintain WM during the task-irrelevant anxiety-provoking distractions, which induced interruption and needed attention. Compared with healthy controls, the patients with OCD showed significantly increased activities in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) supplementary motor area during the delayed-response WM task with anxiety-provoking distractors. An increase in the activity of the DLPFC and SMA reflects compensatory efforts of neural circuits to perform cognitive tasks by controlling emotions and inhibiting the interference of anxiety provoking distractors during WM tasks. In addition, the brain areas showed significantly decreased activities during the delayed-response WM task with neutral distractors were superior parietal gyrus and fusiform gyrus. The parietal cortex, along with the DLPFC is the main structure for frontoparietal network and is involved in cognitive control. Therefore, parietal dysfunction in OCD patients prevents them from paying appropriate attention to visual processing for picture distractors during the WM task. Our findings might be helpful for further understanding of the neural correlates that are associated with the effects of emotional distraction on cognitive function in OCD.

Introduction The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS) specifically predicts that acquired capability, perceived burdensomeness, and low belongingness are collectively necessary and sufficient proximal causes of serious suicidal behavior. Although the interpersonal theory of suicide is clinically reliable, most previous studies have been conducted on clinical groups including suicidal ideators with no suicide attempters or including only a few suicide attempters Objectives This study aims to investigate interpersonal needs and acquired capability for suicide through questionnaire surveys following suicide attempts in people admitted to hospitals for medical treatment. Methods A total of 344 participants (200 depressed patients with attempted suicide, 144 depressed patients with suicidal ideation) were enrolled for this study. Depression, anxiety, emotional regulation, interpersonal needs, and acquired capability for suicide were evaluated. A model with pathways from emotional regulation difficulties and interpersonal needs to suicide attempts was proposed. Participants were divided into two groups according to the presence of suicide attempts or suicidal ideation. Results Acquired capability for suicide mediated the path from depression to suicide attempts. In the path model, difficulties in emotional regulation and interpersonal needs predicted depression significantly. Although depression itself was not significantly related to acquired capability for suicide, depression was significantly related to acquired capability for suicide in suicide attempter group. Conclusions Interventions with two factors affecting suicide attempts will clarify the suicide risk and contribute to finding risk factors. It will also help reduce suicide rates through interventions in the processes leading to suicide attempts by identifying variables to predict the attempts through the path to suicide attempts. Disclosure No significant relationships.

Objective:To investigate not only differential patterns of functional connectivity of core brain regions between implicit and explicit verbal memory tasks underlying negatively evoked emotional condition, but also correlations of functional connectivity (FC) strength with clinical symptom severity in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).Methods:Thirteen patients with GAD and 13 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging for memory tasks with negative emotion words.Results:Clinical symptom and its severities of GAD were potentially associated with abnormalities of task-based FC with core brain regions and distinct FC patterns between implicit vs. explicit memory processing in GAD were potentially well discriminated. Outstanding FC in implicit memory task includes positive connections of precentral gyus (PrG) to inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal gyrus (IPG), respectively, in encoding period; a positive connection of amygdala (Amg) to globus pallidus as well as a negative connection of Amg to cerebellum in retrieval period. Meanwhile, distinct FC in explicit memory included a positive connection of PrG to inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) in encoding period; a positive connection of the anterior cingulate gyrus to superior frontal gyrus in retrieval period. Especially, there were positive correlation between GAD-7 scores and FC of PrG-IPG (r2 = 0.324, p= 0.042) in implicit memory encoding, and FC of PrG-ITG (r2 = 0.378, p= 0.025) in explicit memory encoding.Conclusion:This study clarified differential patterns of brain activation and relevant FC between implicit and explicit verbal memory tasks underlying negative emotional feelings in GAD. These findings will be helpful for an understanding of distinct brain functional mechanisms associated with clinical symptom severities in GAD.

연구목적: 본 연구는 학교 전문상담교사를 위한 정신건강 전문의의 원격화상 자문 프로그램에서, 1) 자문 의뢰된 학생들의 특성을 파악하고, 2) 자문 의뢰서와 전문의 자문록의 내용을 분석하기 위함이다. 연구방법: 본 연구는 원격화상 자문 프로그램의 전산시스템에 저장된 상담자료를 활용한 2차 자료 분석으로, 서술적 탐색연구와 텍스트 분석을 병행한 혼합연구이다. 연구를 위해 2019년 4월 1일부터 2020년 7월 31일까지 시행된 자문 서비스에 대한 전산 기록 전수를 대상으로 자료를 획득하였다. 정량적 변수는 기술통계를 시행하였으며, 자문 관련 텍스트는 넷마이너를 이용하여 핵심어를 도출하고 출현빈도를 산출하였다. 연구결과: 총 136명의 아동과 청소년 대상자 가운데, 남학생이 55.5%, 초등학생38.7%, 정신과 진단력이 있는 학생은 24.8%였다. 자문 의뢰서의 핵심어를 도출한 결과, 대주제는 학생 정신건강 요인, 가정요인, 학교요인이 도출되었고, 최대 18개의 중주제에서 68개의 핵심어가 229회의 출현빈도를 보였다. 가장 출현빈도가 높았던 핵심어는 남학생은 대인관계 어려움(28회), 공격성(15회), 부모이혼 (13회)이었고, 여학생은 분노(11회), 부모이혼(10회), 자해(9회)와 주의력결핍 과잉행동장애 의심(9회)이었다. 위닥터의 자문록은 최대 137개의 핵심어가 215회 출현하였는데, 가장 많은 출현 빈도를 보인 핵심어는 남학생은 지지(10회), 격려(7회), 공감(7회)이었고, 여학생은 격려(11회), 교육(10회), 확인(9회)순이었다. 전문가 연계의 경우, 남학생은 15개의 핵심어가 총 106회, 여학생은 13개의 핵심어가 총 65회 출현하였다. 남녀 학생 모두, 진료, 약물치료, 심리검사가 가장 많은 출현 빈도를 보였다. 결론: 위닥터 프로그램은 위기 아동 청소년을 학교현장에서 상담하는 상담교사를 위한 온라인 자문 프로그램으로써의 시범적 역할을 수행하는데 잠재력이 큰 모델임을 확인할 수 있었다.

COVID-19 has spread worldwide. People are struggling to adjust to a new normal, but changes in their daily routines are also causing stress. A person may feel depressed, uneasy, or suicidal and may complain of symptoms such as panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disease (PTSD), psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or paranoia when personal resilience cannot effectively process the stress. Children, adolescents, and health care workers are especially psychologically vulnerable groups in the pandemic calamity situation; therefore, a long-term intervention plan is necessary for them. When intervening with children and adolescents, it should be considered that each individual has different ways of expressing stress according to the developmental level of cognition, language, and emotion, and taking into account these developmental levels, it is necessary to help them achieve developmental tasks appropriate for their age. Health care workers feel psychological pain from problems such as the risk of becoming infected, the risk of passing the virus to their families, overwork, isolation, and stigma. Therefore, it is necessary to help them recover themselves by supplying personal protective equipment and providing the most basic resources necessary for adequate rest, work-life balance, and childcare.

Objectives This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Korean Form of the Premonitory Urge for Tics Scale (K-PUTS). Methods Thirty-eight patients with Tourette’s disorder who visited Jeonbuk National University Hospital were assessed with the K-PUTS. Together with the PUTS, the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS), the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) rating scale (ARS), and the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) were implemented to evaluate concurrent and discriminant validity. Results The internal consistency of items on the PUTS was high, with a Cronbach’s α of 0.79. The test-retest reliability of the PUTS, which was administered at 2 weeks to 2 months intervals, showed high reliability with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.60. There was a significant positive correlation between the overall PUTS score and the YGTSS score, showing concurrent validity. There was no correlation between the PUTS, CY-BOCS, and ASRS scores, demonstrating the discriminant validity of the PUTS. Factor analysis for construct validity revealed three factors: “presumed functional relationship between the tic and the urge to tic,” “the quality of the premonitory urge,” and “just right phenomena.” Conclusion The results of this study indicate that the K-PUTS is a reliable and valid scale for rating premonitory urge of tics.

Objective This study assessed the associations of the abnormal brain activation and functional connectivity (FC) during memory processing and brain volume alteration in conjunction with psychiatric symptom severity in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Methods Twenty-OCD patients and 20-healthy controls (HC) underwent T1-weighted and functional imaging underlying explicit memory task. Results In memory encoding, OCD patients showed higher activities in right/left (Rt./Lt.) inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), compared with HC. In task-based FC, caudate (Cd) was positively connected with DLPFC and ITG in OCD, while HC showed different connectivities of Cd-ACC and Rt.-Lt. ITG. In memory retrieval, only Cd was activated in OCD patients. Cd was positively connected with DLPFC and vmPFC in OCD, but negatively connected between same brain areas in HC. OCD patients showed increased gray matter (GM) volumes of cerebellum, DLPFC, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), hippocampus, Cd and ITG, and concurrently, increased white matter volumes of DLPFC. In OCD patients, GM volumes of Cd and OFC were positively correlated with HAMA and Y-BOCS. Functional activity changes of Cd in OCD were positively correlated with Y-BOCS. Conclusion Our findings support to accessing clinical symptom and its severity linked by brain structural deformation and functional abnormality in OCD patients.

Objectives The purpose of this study was to investigate the distinctive features of bodily panic symptoms and the predisposing conditions in Korean patients with panic disorder.Methods This was a retrospective chart review study and the data were collected from twelve university-affiliated hospitals in Korea.The patients selected met the diagnostic criteria for panic disorder, were older than 20 years of age, and had initially visited a psychiatry department.The assessments included the chief complaints related to bodily panic symptoms, recent stressors, recent history of alcohol and sleep problems, and time to visit an outpatient clinic.

Glutamatergic transmission composed of the arriving of action potential at the axon terminal, fast vesicular Glu release, postsynaptic Glu receptor activation, astrocytic Glu clearance and Glu→Gln shuttle is an abundantly investigated phenomenon. Despite its essential role, however, much less is known about the consequences of the mechanistic connotations of Glu:Na+ symport. Due to the coupled Na+ transport, Glu uptake results in significantly elevated intracellular astrocytic [Na+] that markedly alters the driving force of other Na+-coupled astrocytic transporters. The resulting GABA and Gln release by reverse transport through the respective GAT-3 and SNAT3 transporters help to re-establish the physiological Na+ homeostasis without ATP dissipation and consequently leads to enhanced tonic inhibition and replenishment of axonal glutamate pool. Here, we place this emerging astrocytic adjustment of synaptic excitability into the centre of future perspectives.This article is part of the issue entitled ‘Special Issue on Neurotransmitter Transporters’.

Objective : This study aimed to investigate the general process from the symptom onset to the psychiatric treatment in Korean panic patients and the effect of improved public awareness on it. Methods : This study has a retrospective design. The subjects were the new patients with panic disorder who visited the psychiatric outpatient clinic in twelve university-affiliated hospitals all across Korea. The medical chart was reviewed retrospectively and the data were collected including chief complaints of symptoms, recent stressors, the time to visit the psychiatric outpatient clinic, and visit of other departments and diagnostic approaches for their symptoms. Results : A total of 814 participants were included in the study. The most common department other than psychiatry the panic patients visited were cardiology (28.3%), general internal medicine (16.0%) and neurology (11.4%). The most frequently used diagnostic tests were a echocardiography (17.9%), 24-hour Holter monORIGINAL ARTICLE 한국인 공황장애 환자의 치료적 접근 과정 62 Anxiety and Mood █ Volume 15, No 2 █ October, 2019 서 론 공황장애는 명백한 이유 없이 갑작스러운 극심한 공포가 반복적으로 나타나는 불안장애의 하나이다. 공황 발작은 극 도의 공포심과 함께 빈맥이나 호흡곤란, 발한, 떨림, 흉부 불 편감, 구역감 및 복부 불편감, 어지럼증, 오한 또는 열감, 이상 감각 등 교감신경계 항진으로 인한 신체 증상이 나타나며, 여 기에 비현실감 및 이인증, 통제력 상실에 대한 공포, 죽음에 대한 공포 등 심한 불안증상이 동반되기도 한다. 공황장애 는 흔히 광장공포증과 병발되는데, 공황발작 시 도움을 받을 수 없는 장소나 상황이 공황 발작의 유발요인으로 작용하여 증상이 발생한다. 반면 일부 환자에서는 큰 스트레스가 없는 휴식이나 수면상태에서 공황 발작이 나타나기도 한다. 대부 분의 환자들은 공황 발작의 재발을 지속적으로 걱정하고 그 결과에 대해 두려워하며, 이를 피하기 위한 행동상의 변화를 나타낸다. 공황장애는 발작이 언제 나타날지를 예측하기 어 려우며 발작 시 극도의 공포를 경험하게 되므로 환자의 치료 욕구는 매우 높은 편으로 알려져 있다. 하지만 많은 수의 환자들은 질환 자체에 대한 인식 부족으로 적절한 진단 및 치료를 받지 못해 왔던 것으로 보인다. 1980년 대에 이르러서야 공황장애가 DSM-III에서 독립된 질환으로 분류되었는데, 상대적으로 짧은 질환의 역사는 일반인은 물 론 의료인들에게도 질환에 대한 인식도가 충분치 않았을 수 있음을 의미한다. 치료적 개입의 지연으로 만성적인 경과를 밟게 되는 경우 우울장애나 알코올 의존과 같은 2차적인 문 제를 야기하며 이는 높은 자살율과 연결된다. 잦은 응급실 방문 및 회피행동은 사회적 기능의 질적인 저하와 연결되는 데 대인관계의 어려움 및 가족 간의 갈등이 쉽게 발생할 뿐 만 아니라 직장 내 결근율을 높이고 생산성을 악화시켜 이 로 인한 직, 간접적인 사회 경제적인 손실이 매우 큰 것으로 추정된다. 더욱이 공황장애 환자들의 신체적 증상은 내외과 적 질환과의 감별이 어렵기 때문에 여러 임상과들을 전전하며 많은 검사들을 거치게 되고, 이로 인해 치료가 지연되며 사회 적으로 막대한 건강 관리 비용이 소요된다. 첫 공황증상 이후 적절한 치료가 시작될 때까지 어느 정도 시간이 소요되는지에 대한 정보를 제시하는 기존의 문헌은 매 우 적었다. 1981년에 발표된 국외 문헌에서는 약 10년 이상의 시 간이 소요되었다고 보고된 바 있으며, 국내에서는 1996년 김 영철 등이 약 3년 정도 소요된다고 보고하였다. 신체 감각에 대한 파국적인 해석을 핵심으로 하는 질환의 특성 상, 문화적 차이가 증상에 대한 이해 및 의료적 접근 과정에 영향을 미칠 수 있으며 시간에 따른 질환의 인식도 변화도 중요한 변인으로 작용할 것이다. 이러한 정보는 질병 현상을 이해하고 공중보 건의 관점에서 사업 방향을 설정하는데 중요할 것으로 생각되 지만 현재까지 기존의 연구는 매우 부족한 것으로 보인다. 최근 국내에서 시행된 일반인들의 공황장애 인식도에 관한 조사에서는 전체 대상자의 약 30%가 연구에서 제시된 공황장 애의 증례를 읽고 공황장애라고 정확히 답을 하였으며 50%는 최소한 정신적 혹은 심리적 문제로 이해하고 있었다. 흥미로 운 사실은 전체 대상자의 70% 이상이 질환을 앓고 있는 유명 인들에 대한 소식이나 매체의 보도를 통해 공황장애를 알게 되었다는 점이다. 공황장애를 앓고 있는 여러 유명인들의 소 식이 기사화 되어 대중매체의 관심을 끌기 시작한 것은 대략 2010년대 전반기로 보인다. 기존의 연구에 따르면 ‘공황장애’ 에 대한 대중매체의 기사는 2007년 11건, 2008년 21건, 2009 년 17건 이었으나, 2010년 63건, 2011년 285건, 2012년 679건, 2014년 2,666건으로 급증하기 시작했다. 건강보험심사평가 원의 발표에 따르면 공황장애를 진단받은 환자 수는 2010년 도에는 5만여 명, 2012년 8만3천여 명, 2014년 9만8천여 명, 2016년에는 12만명으로 급격하게 증가하고 있는데 그 정도는 알 수 없으나 일반인과 의료진의 공황장애에 대한 인식도의 변화가 일정부분 영향을 미쳤을 가능성이 있다. 대한불안의학회에서는 일반인들을 대상으로 불안장애에 대한 홍보 및 교육에 많은 노력을 기울여왔다. 질환에 대한 itoring (11.2%), and brain MRI (8.2%). Only 37.3% of participants visited psychiatric clinic directly. About 80% of participants visited psychiatric department within 1 year after their first panic symptoms and it took 13.8±13.7 weeks on average. Comparing before and after 2012, the number of participants increased who visit directly the psychiatric clinic without visiting other departments (p=0.002) and without visiting emergency room (p<0.001). Conclusions : Our results suggest that a substantial number of patients visit departments other than psychiatry when they experience first panic symptoms. However, most patients begin psychiatric treatment within 1 year after their first symptoms and the number of patient are increasing who visit psychiatric department directly without visiting other departments. (Anxiety and Mood 2019;15(2):61-67)