The purpose of this study was to provide a mental health service liaison system to resolve the psychological problems of children in orphanage facilities. Survey results by workers at orphanages were analyzed based on the awareness of workers at child...
The purpose of this study was to provide a mental health service liaison system to resolve the psychological problems of children in orphanage facilities. Survey results by workers at orphanages were analyzed based on the awareness of workers at child counseling centers, community social welfare centers, and community mental health centers. Also, to examine the recent increase in the number of child-abuse victims entering orphanage facilities, 232 workers at child-abuse prevention centers were included among the 459 participants in the study.
The types of organizations which workers at orphanages felt were needed to help relieve the psychological problems of children in the orphanages were, in order,: child counseling centers, community mental health centers, and school counseling offices. Currently, however, counseling services within community child counseling centers are focused on adoption rather than the relief of children's psychological problems, and very few public child counseling centers offer services related to these problems, so it is difficult for effective child counseling to take place in these organizations.
Recently, service policies based on the 1995 Korean mental health law that forced community mental health centers to focus largely on the chronically mentally ill have been changed, and beginning in 2002, school mental health services will be provided in sixteen community mental health centers. It is expected that this will foster a service liaison between the mental health centers and the school counseling offices in the communities, and based on the positive results shown in a recent study on allowing schools to provide mental health services along with the standard physical health services, this service liaison is likely to be effective in resolving the psychological problems of children.