Health Related Quality of Life of Urban Young Adults Misusing Analgesics Participating in a Controlled, Cross-sectional Study in East Sikkim, North East India

• Main Authors: Deepanjana Dass, Sunil Kumar Pandey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: JCDR Research and Publications Private Limited 2018-03-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
• Subjects: abuse; addiction; drug; pain; prescription
• Online Access: https://jcdr.net/articles/PDF/11315/30963_F(AnG)_PF1(MJ_AP)_PFA(MJ_AP)_PB(MJ_AP)_PN(AP).pdf
• ISSN: 2249-782X; 0973-709X

Introduction: A great deal of interest exists in assessing the health related Quality of Life (QoL) as an important aspect of treatment effectiveness with prescription drug misuse. The SF36 Health Survey is a self-report measure assessing subjective health status along with physical and mental health domains. Aim: To evaluate how analgesic misuse affects both physical and emotional QoL in an urban area of Sikkim in a young adult population (15-40 years of age) of either sex. Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional general population survey. Proposed study site included an urban area in East Sikkim. A pre-devised questionnaire of SF36 was administered to 700 subjects. Data were statistically analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software version 20.0. Results: Significant difference among analgesic misusers and non misusers in measures like general health (χ2 =17.197, df=2, p<0.001), compared to one year ago, health condition now (χ2 =8.379, df=2, p=0.015), emotional health-depression (χ2 =13.811, df=2, p=0.001), emotional health-full of life (χ2 =8.998, df=2, p=0.011), emotional health-felt dumped (χ2 =6.065, df=2, p=0.048), emotional health-energy (χ2 =13.190, df=2, p=0.001), emotional health-worn out (χ2 =6.325, df=2, p=0.042) was found. Conclusion: This study could identify a subset of participants in their youth with current pain and several measures of low QoL in emotional domain like depression, full of life, energy; felt dumped, worn out in the past four weeks in subjects misusing analgesics. Low QoL also identifies possibility of future onset of mental and psychiatric impairments.