Abstract

Introduction: Globally depression is a leading cause of disability and contributes to one third of global burden of diseases. More than 150 million adults suffer from depression at any point in time and nearly one million commit suicides every year. Despite immense diversity in the socio-cultural environments in Pakistan, there is an overall very high prevalence of anxiety and depression in rural Pakistan.

Patients and Methodology: All patients from March to August 2015 presented to family medicine clinics in rural health area Booni Centre Chitral for general medical problems fulfilling the inclusion criteria recruited via convenience sampling. Data then entered in SPSS 21. Patient health questionnaire (PHQ 9) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) 7 questionnaires were administered for assessment of depression and anxiety respectively. Sociodemographic factors were also assessed.

Results: In a sample size of 230 patients 71% of participants were of range of 18 - 35 years. Mean age was 31.3 years. Male were 118 (51.3%) were found to be in higher proportion as compare to females.

Prevalence of depression of found to be 67%, and GAD was found to be 33.5%, living alone and female gender were found to be associated with Depression and anxiety with p-value = < 0.005 and p-value = 0.025 respectively.

Conclusion: As there is a high rate of depression in Chitral, education and support from family, friends is a strong factor in dealing with depression. Launch of a mental health program in Chitral specifically addressing gender and different age groups will be a big step towards successful rehabilitation of individuals.

Keywords: Depression; Anxiety; Chitral

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Citation

Citation: Sidra Kanwal.,et al. “Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety in Rural Health Centre Chitral: A Cross Sectional Study". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 4.9 (2020): 12-17.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Sidra Kanwal.,et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.