Assessment of Depression and its Risk Factors among the Selected Districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provinces of Paksitan
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background: Worldwide, depression affects approximately 2% to 25% of individuals is a common non-communicable disease. Moreover, depression showed significant relationship with medical conditions, tobacco smoking, diet intake, lifestyle habits, and exercise.
Objective: This study was conducted to estimate the frequency of depression and its determinants among selected districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces of Pakistan.
Study Design: A Cross Sectional Descriptive Study
Place and Duration of Study: Selected districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwafrom December 2019 to March 2020.
Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted among the selected districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwai.e. Peshawar, Nowshera, Multan &Dera Ghazi Khan, in which a total of 440 adults were selected through convenience sampling technique, based on 95% confidence interval, with 5% precision for a cross sectional study. Therefore 110 individuals from the selected districts were interviewed and assessed for depression on Physical Health Questionnaire -9 (PHQ-9). Moreover, WHO severity grades was used for calculating the severity. Finally, SPSS version 23.0 was used for description of data and analysis and thus finally tables were used for presentation of study results.
Results: Results showed that 52.95% had depression based on PHQ-9. 42.50% were found to have mild depression, 7.95% had moderate depression and 2.5% (n=) had severe depression. Moreover, approximately, 23.18% were victim of abuse/ neglect, 12.73% had history of trauma, 21.07% reported failures in exam, 17.73% had positive medical history, 49.32% were not taking healthy diet, and 58.86% were not involved in physical exercise.
Conclusions: It was concluded that the frequency of depression among the studied districts was high and showed significant relationship with common risk factors of depression i.e. medical conditions, tobacco smoking status, healthy food intake, exercise, and physical exercise etc. Moreover, the depression also showed strong relationship with history of flood, terrorism, and alcoholism and thus medical and rehabilitative services weresuggested to control depression among the studied communities.