Assessment of Anxiety and Depression among Adult Population of Kashmir, India: A Cross-sectional Study

Mental health in Kashmir remains a concern and is threatening to become an ever-increasing epidemic. The changing social structure and the low-intensity armed conflict have become the basis of a deteriorating state of mental health among Kashmiris. In addition to this, the other factors are widespread poverty, uncertainty, grief, oppression, fear and high unemployment with limited employment generating sectors.

To assess the depression, anxiety and mental distress among the adult population of Budgam district, Kashmir, India.

A cross-sectional study was conducted at the community level in District Budgam, Jammu and Kashmir, India, from December 2019 to March 2020. Total three Investigators, one Senior Research Fellow (SRF) and two Junior Research Fellow (JRF) collected the data. The SRF was a Clinical Psychologist while the JRF were trained social workers. A door to door survey was conducted in the villages which were selected randomly from the list of the villages. The probability random sampling technique was used for the research purpose. Hopkins Symptoms Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) was used in the study and whereby after analysing the scores of the scale, results were derived. Chi-square and t-test were applied for statistical comparison.

Out of 133 individuals, 55 were males and 78 were females.The age of the sample ranged from 18 to 45 years, with a mean age of 37 years. Total 29.32% of the adults scored above the cut-off for anxiety symptoms and 34.58% scored above the cut-off for depressive symptoms, while 39% of these adults fall above the cut-off for mental distress scores.The validated cut-off score for the anxiety was 1.75 and for the depression was 1.57. Feeling tense, being worried, nervousness and low energy were reported as the symptoms of the mental distress among the people. Females, unemployed and individuals from lower socio-economic status reported higher degree of mental distress than others.

Mental health issues in terms of anxiety, depression, and mental distress are found among the adult population in district Budgam. There was a significant mean difference in the mental distress levels concerning various socio-demographic variables. The study concluded that being female, having some medical condition, being unemployed, belonging to lower socio-economic status, belonging to nuclear family predict mental health distress.