(123rf)
The South Korean authorities stated Thursday that it has determined to manage an everyday psychological well being checkup for these aged between 20 and 34, beginning subsequent yr as a part of the state-run nationwide well being examination program.
Based on the Ministry of Well being and Welfare, state well being examination committee members performed a gathering and agreed to broaden the psychological well being checkup program. As a part of the nationwide well being checkup program run by the Nationwide Well being Insurance coverage Service, the present program offers a psychological well being examination as soon as each 10 years. Younger Koreans will now have entry to an evaluation as soon as each two years.
“Solely 12.1 p.c of the Koreans and 16.2 p.c of younger Koreans use psychological well being providers. … By lowering the interval between assessments, we search to cut back the untreated interval for psychological sickness and permit a immediate prognosis and therapy after the preliminary signs,” the ministry stated.
Along with the present exams for despair, the nationwide checkup will embrace testing for early levels of different psychological illnesses to make sure that psychological circumstances are handled of their early levels.
Those that show signs will likely be supplied entry to associated medical well being institutes by the ministry for additional prognosis. The ministry may also present means for constant therapy and administration of these with psychological circumstances.
Experiences have indicated a considerable enhance in psychological well being points among the many younger inhabitants. A January report by the state-run Well being Insurance coverage Evaluation and Evaluation Service confirmed that simply over one million individuals had been handled for despair in 2022, marking the primary time the determine surpassed the million mark.
What was extra vital was how quickly the variety of younger psychological sufferers grew. In 2017, sufferers of their 20s and 30s accounted for 23.4 p.c of the 680,000 psychological sufferers. This proportion rose to 35.9 p.c in 2022, with the precise variety of sufferers greater than doubling from 159,000 to 350,000.