Despite the popularity of the study of borderline personality disorder, definition of “Chronic Emptiness” were applied to define the theoretical concept and never met an agreement among evaluators.

First, the preliminary questionnaire was prepared based on the previous studies and the data collected through the in-depth interviews with the people with borderline personality disorder, and the final 18 items were developed through the item analysis. In order to verify the reliability and validity of the emptiness scale, 526 adults from 18 to 40 years of age were tested for internal consistency coefficient, and factor analysis and validity test were conducted.

The internal consistency coefficient of the emptiness scale was very good. As a result of the factor analysis, it was confirmed that it has a single structure. On validity test, emptiness was highly correlated with borderline personality disorder, depression, and suicide ideation.

Emptiness is associated with identity problems, and adolescents tend to do NSSI to deal with emptiness related to identity formation. Until now, the terms of loneliness, solitude, and emptiness have not been sufficiently distinguished, but the distinction between the respective terms has become possible through measuring emptiness. The implications and limitations of this research and subsequent studies discussed.

The purpose of this study is to develop the Korean dysfunctional depression submodule scales, which are composed of hwa-byung, mood dysregulation, female depression, anxiety, spouse conflict and suicidal risk.

To achieve this purpose, we developed preliminary items of six submodules through the theoretical approach and experiential approach. Then we collected data from professionals and para-professionals in mental health area (n=407) and 275 data were used to analyzed. Correlation with criterion, item information function, item-total correlation, and explorative factor analysis are performed using Mplus 7.4 and SPSS 21.0.

6 submodules of the Korean dysfunctional depression are composed of 8 items for Hwa-byung, 7 items for mood dysregulation, 7 items for female depression, 7 items for anxiety, 7 items for spouse-conflict and 9 items for suicidal risk. Reliability of submodules are .84∼.93.

These submodules of the Korean dysfunctional depression scale are verified to have high reliability and expected to be useful to assess the specific and various features of the dysfunctional depression.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the Korean dysfunctional depression scale, which measures pathological depression including subclinical depression and clinical depression.

To achieve this purpose, we collected data from patients diagnosed as having depressive disorder and clients with chief complaints related to depression, and 360 data were analyzed.

Using item linkage methods, we decided 20 items as a dysfunctional depression scale for group research. The results of reliability verification show high internal consistency and stable test-retest reliability. In addition, the result of factor validity demonstrates general factor and two specific factors-the first specific factor is ‘the physical-somatic factor’ and the second specific factor is ‘the pessimistic cognition and alienation factor’. Convergent validity was also confirmed good. Lastly, this study performed standard setting workshop consisting of content experts to decide cut-scores of dysfunctional depression scale. Through the workshop, the standard cut-score of normal-subclinical depression was decided as 44 and the standard cut-score of subclinical-clinical depression was decided as 58. The classification consistency and accuracy indices were to validate standard cut-scores.

This Korean dysfunctional depression scale is verified to have high reliability and validity.