For example, the mental hospital in Chungjin is located in the most underdeveloped village of Sungmak. Sungmin has several NIMBY facilities, including contagious disease hospital, tuberculosis hospital and other facilities like Number 49 Prevention Post.
Other than Number 49 Prevention Post, there are province hospitals that has psychiatric department (Each province has its own medical school and its subsidiary hospital. There are 13 province hospitals throughout North Korea). However, province hospitals have no in-patient facility. Therefore, if people need – or are diagnosed that they need – hospitalization, they have to go to the remote Number 49 Prevention Posts.
What then, is the quality of medical treatment for mental patients in North Korea? According to a North Korean refugee who practiced medicine in North Korea, as of Fall of 2005, there were two methods used as treatment. First, patient is injected with insulin to the point where he/she falls into coma because of the low blood sugar. Patient is left in this condition for few minutes to several hours before injected with glucose again to wake them up. This type of treatment is done in the belief that having to faint and awake again cures the mental disorder. According to South Korean mental health expert, this is one of the most primitive levels of treatment that is not being used anywhere in the world anymore. .
Another method of treatment is to give sedation injections and putting the patient to sleep. There is no application of medical counseling or psychological therapy. Because of this primitive form of medical treatment, very few people survive and get cured.
Dismal condition of North Korean mental treatment causes the field to be one of the least popular concentrations among medical students. Medical school graduates with clinical medicine degree are given the qualification to become mental health doctors (Reference 2).