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A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong

Background: A prospective cohort study was conducted to follow-up on 104 participants on their changes of social, psychological and physical health as exposed to the hikikomori lifestyle. Methods: Participants were interviewed at baseline, 6 months and 12 months by administering a set of questionnai...

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Autores principales: Yuen, John W. M., Wong, Victor C. W., Tam, Wilson W. S., So, Ka Wing, Chien, Wai Tong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406688/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30769783
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16040546
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author Yuen, John W. M.
Wong, Victor C. W.
Tam, Wilson W. S.
So, Ka Wing
Chien, Wai Tong
author_facet Yuen, John W. M.
Wong, Victor C. W.
Tam, Wilson W. S.
So, Ka Wing
Chien, Wai Tong
author_sort Yuen, John W. M.
collection PubMed
description Background: A prospective cohort study was conducted to follow-up on 104 participants on their changes of social, psychological and physical health as exposed to the hikikomori lifestyle. Methods: Participants were interviewed at baseline, 6 months and 12 months by administering a set of questionnaires and anthropometric measurements. Results: All three health domains of hikikomori were significantly improved over the follow-up period as evidenced by: (1) increased social network scores from 2.79 ± 1.80 to 3.09 ± 1.87, (2) decreased perceived stress scores from 21.18 ± 5.87 to 20.11 ± 5.79, and (3) reduced blood pressure levels from 118/75 to 115/71 and waist-to-hip ratios. Almost half of the participants have recovered from hikikomori by returning to the workforce in society; however, the health improvements were dominant in those that remained as hikikomori and were associated with the gradual swapping of exercise practices from light to moderate level strength. Conclusions: With intended exposure to social worker engagement, physical assessments of the cohort study triggered the social workers to encourage participants to do more exercises, which in turn enhanced their awareness of health modification towards a better health. Engagement of social workers could be considered as part of the intended exposure for all participants, which suggested social work intervention was effective in helping hikikomori recovery.
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spelling pubmed-64066882019-03-21 A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong Yuen, John W. M. Wong, Victor C. W. Tam, Wilson W. S. So, Ka Wing Chien, Wai Tong Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Background: A prospective cohort study was conducted to follow-up on 104 participants on their changes of social, psychological and physical health as exposed to the hikikomori lifestyle. Methods: Participants were interviewed at baseline, 6 months and 12 months by administering a set of questionnaires and anthropometric measurements. Results: All three health domains of hikikomori were significantly improved over the follow-up period as evidenced by: (1) increased social network scores from 2.79 ± 1.80 to 3.09 ± 1.87, (2) decreased perceived stress scores from 21.18 ± 5.87 to 20.11 ± 5.79, and (3) reduced blood pressure levels from 118/75 to 115/71 and waist-to-hip ratios. Almost half of the participants have recovered from hikikomori by returning to the workforce in society; however, the health improvements were dominant in those that remained as hikikomori and were associated with the gradual swapping of exercise practices from light to moderate level strength. Conclusions: With intended exposure to social worker engagement, physical assessments of the cohort study triggered the social workers to encourage participants to do more exercises, which in turn enhanced their awareness of health modification towards a better health. Engagement of social workers could be considered as part of the intended exposure for all participants, which suggested social work intervention was effective in helping hikikomori recovery. MDPI 2019-02-14 2019-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6406688/ /pubmed/30769783 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16040546 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yuen, John W. M.
Wong, Victor C. W.
Tam, Wilson W. S.
So, Ka Wing
Chien, Wai Tong
A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title_full A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title_fullStr A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title_full_unstemmed A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title_short A One-Year Prospective Follow-Up Study on the Health Profile of Hikikomori Living in Hong Kong
title_sort one-year prospective follow-up study on the health profile of hikikomori living in hong kong
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406688/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30769783
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16040546
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