Yoshii Hatsumi, Watanabe Yuichiro, Kitamura Hideaki, Nan Zhang, Akazawa Kouhei
School of Health Sciences, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan.
Glob J Health Sci. 2011 Dec 29;4(1):33-41. doi: 10.5539/gjhs.v4n1p33.
Early intervention in schizophrenia is important for patient prognosis and quality of life. At the time of the first episode, quality of life is influenced by identification of symptoms and by medical help-seeking behavior. In this prospective cohort study, we investigated help-seeking among 2690 parents of junior and senior high school students before and after the parents viewed a newly developed web-based education program aimed at improving knowledge of schizophrenia. Our web-based education program aimed to improve understanding of schizophrenia, including promotion of help-seeking. Many parents (33.1%-50.0%) consulted a physician in a department of psychosomatic medicine when their child experienced symptoms. Characteristics that predicted a decision not to seek psychiatric medical help were having child with all symptoms, younger parent age, and lower family income (p<0.05). After the education program, the rate of parents who sought medical help within 1 week was significantly higher for all symptom categories except sleeplessness (p=0.001). These findings suggest that the present web-based education program was useful in promoting medical help-seeking behavior among parents of junior and senior high school students in Japan.
精神分裂症的早期干预对患者的预后和生活质量至关重要。在首次发作时，生活质量受到症状识别和就医行为的影响。在这项前瞻性队列研究中，我们调查了2690名初中生和高中生的家长在观看了一个旨在提高精神分裂症知识的新开发的网络教育项目前后的就医情况。我们的网络教育项目旨在增进对精神分裂症的理解，包括促进就医。许多家长（33.1%-50.0%）在孩子出现症状时会咨询身心医学科的医生。预测不寻求精神科医疗帮助的特征包括孩子出现所有症状、家长年龄较小以及家庭收入较低（p<0.05）。在教育项目之后，除失眠外，所有症状类别中在1周内寻求医疗帮助的家长比例显著更高（p=0.001）。这些发现表明，目前的网络教育项目有助于促进日本初中生和高中生家长的就医行为。
