With population aging and change in family structure, the number of the elderly who live alone is rapidly increasing in Korea. The aim of this study was to explore the association between social relationships—especially newly formed formal social relationships (FSRs)—and suicidal ideation among Korean elderly who live alone. The elderly who live alone (N = 2509) from the 2014 Survey of Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Older Koreans were analyzed using logistic regression. This study found that informal social relationships (ISRs) (eg, children, friends and neighbors) of the elderly who live alone had statistically significant association with suicidal ideation, whereas FSRs (eg, formal helper and social participation) did not have significant association with suicidal ideation. The findings of this study suggest that the Korean Government needs to strengthen public system for alleviating social isolation of the elderly living alone. Therefore, this study proposed 2 strategic approaches to maintain and strengthen ISRs and to develop different types of FSRs (eg, the measures to combine FSRs with ISRs, gatekeepers, etc).

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between depression, stress, self-esteem, oral health-related quality of life in middle-aged women. Data were as collected by self-reported questionnaires from 205 middle-age women. The instruments were the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D), Brief Encounter Psychosocial Instrument (BEPSI), Self-Esteem Scale (SES). The data were analyzed using t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression with IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 21.0. Pearson correlation coefficient analysis found that oral health impact profile (OHIP) was significantly associated with depression (r=−0.560, p＜0.001), stress (r=−0.595, p＜0.001), self-esteem (r=0.522, p＜0.001). The OHIP was explained 39.4% by stress (=−0.362, p＜0.001), self-esteem (=0.203, p=0.009) using multiple regression analysis. These results indicate that the intervention program of oral health promotion for communitymiddle-aged women is needed from now on.

Abstract

Due to an increase in the ageing population, the migrant care market now includes new home-based long-term care (LTC) under the national long-term care insurance. This study underlines a perspective of the Korean migrant care market in terms of long-term care quality in South Korea. Thus, the study explored the institutional factors that restrict and promote the migrant care workers (MCWs). Two migrant workers groups were analysed: migrant care workers in home-based long-term care versus nursing hospitals. Designed as an in-depth policy-oriented content analysis, this study used three types of data including interviews with eight participants (MCWs, the nursing hospital manager, and the LTC home manager), organisational documents (employment eligibility criteria), and institutional texts (law, administration rules, etc.). Our results indicate that the factors hindering employment of MCWs in home-based LTC were visa status, qualification requirements (the National Qualified License), wage regulation policies, and social security obligations. A promoting factor was jobs that hired on an on-call basis. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the growth of the migration care market and sustainability in LTC quality depend on the policy directions of the Korean long-term care insurance.

The findings point to the potential benefits of acquired cultural capital as a means to promote the life satisfaction of the baby boom generation.