Some 3 percent of the active soldiers in South Korea have received treatment for mental and behavioral disorders from 2011 to 2013, military medical officials said Wednesday.
A total of 19,066 soldiers out of some 650,000 men and women in uniform in the Korean military were treated for the cited diseases, according to a report by the Armed Forces Medical Command.
Of the 2,158 soldiers initially diagnosed with anxiety disorders, 1,913 were confirmed by psychiatrists. Enlisted soldiers accounted for the majority of them with 1,650 cases.
The number of anxiety disorder cases went from 115.7 per 100,000 soldiers in 2011 to 118.8, but then decreased substantially to 93.9 in 2013.
Researchers found a significant increase in the number of panic disorders, from 16.1 per 100,000 in 2011 to 23 in 2013.
