Background
: In Korea, there were many socioeconomic changes under the IMF management system. Therefore we assumed that the stress levels increased. This study was done to investigate the changes in people's stress, health behaviors, symptoms, and coping responses which might be affected by socio-economic changes during the IMF crisis with in 1 year.

Methods : In September, 1998, we sent questionnaires to a total of 560 persons who were over 18 years old and lived in Changwon city. We chose 359 subjects who completed the survey. Assuming that the stress of one's own marriage was 50 points, we asked them what degree of stress was the previous year and after August of 1997. Also, we asked them the estimate how much degree of stress had changed based on the 17 factors of life events according to Likert 5 points scale. Specifically, we investi-gated on how health behaviors were changed, how people responded to stress by using 19 coping potions of Billing and Moos, and how the 20 symptoms were changed.

Results : 71.7% of subjects replied that income was within 1 year. The amount of stress was in-creased by 13.2 points compared to the stress previous year. The levels stress in men increased significa-ntly more than in women(P=0.003), but there were no significant differences in terms of marital status, education, and age. With respect to the change of healthy behaviors, there was a tendency that the amount of exercise decreased significantly in subjects who had more stress(P=0.020). But there was no significant difference in the amount of smoking and drinking, in the frequency of drinking, sleeping time, and the regularity of eating. The health behavior score, the number of positive health behaviors, was significantly changed to negative in those whose stress increased(P=0.015). There was a tendency that the frequency of 15 symptoms among 20 symptoms significantly increased in those whose stress in-creased. Also, those whose stress increased significantly used more avoidant coping responses(P=0.007).

Conclusion : In this study, we found that those whose stress levels increased within 1 year compared to the year before up to September of 1987, had their health behaviors significantly deteriorated, and had more symptoms with avoidant coping responses. In conclusion, we suggest that those whose stress levels increased should be guided to promote good health behaviors, to use active coping responses rather than avoidant coping responses, and should be given more social support.