THE IMPACT OF GENDER, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY ON KOREAN WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH

I review the issue of Korean women's anger from the perspectives of gender, culture, and society, and describe the influences of those factors on the women's mental health. Hwa-byung (HB) is a Korean culture-bound syndrome that translates into English as an anger disorder. In Korea, middle-aged women are the mostly highly represented societal group with HB, the symptoms of which are connected with complex psychological, physiological, behavioral, and social disabilities. In this paper, associations among elements related to Korean women's anger and HB are examined within the frameworks of gender, culture, and society. I concluded that the issue of Korean women's anger is not limited to its own context but is part of the wider issues of gender, culture, and society. These issues produce many difficulties, amplify problems, and generate interrelated women's mental health concerns.