J Korean Acad Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs JKAPMHN Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 1225-8482 2288-4653 The Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 10.12934/jkpmhn.2011.20.4.325 Original Article Anger, Anger Expression, Mental Health and Psychosomatic Symptoms of Children in Multi-cultural Families Moon So-Hyun 1 An Hyo-Ja 2 Full-time Lecturer, Department of Nursing, Mokpo National University, Korea. Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing, Dongshin University, Korea. Address reprint requests to: An, Hyo-Ja, Department of Nursing, Dongshin University, 253 GeonJae-Ro, Naju, Jeonnam 520-714, Korea. Tel: 82-61-330-3586, Fax: 82-61-330-3580, callm68@dsu.ac.kr 12 2011 31 12 2011 20 4 325 333 24 08 2011 14 11 2011 14 11 2011 © 2011 The Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 2011 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Purpose

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship of anger, and its expression type to mental health and psychosomatic symptoms in children of multi-cultural families.

 Methods

The data were collected from 125 students in grades 4~6, and analyzed using descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, t-test, ANOVA, Tukey's multiple comparison test were used with the SPSS/WIN 12.0 program.

 Results

Three anger-expression types were found; low anger expression, anger-out, anger-control/in type. There were significant difference in mental health and psychosomatic symptoms between the upper 25% and lower 25% groups of state-trait anger. Also, levels of state-trait anger and types of anger expression were associated with mental health and psychosomatic symptoms.

 Conclusion

Anger management programs for children in multi-cultural families are necessary to help them lower anger levels and control types of unfavorable anger expression such as the anger-out-in type.

 Anger Mental health Psychosomatic Multi-cultural families Child National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) KRF-2009-32A-B00135

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (KRF-2009-32A-B00135).

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