A Study on Mental Health of Alcoholics in Sivagangai District, Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Introduction: In India, there were 62.5 million alcohol users, with a per capita consumption of 4 litres per adult. For every six men, one-woman drinks alcohol in India and India is the third-largest market for alcohol in the world. Tamil Nadu ranks first among the states in India in alcohol consumption. Objectives: (i) to find out the socio-economic background of the alcoholics, (ii) to assess self-esteem, hopelessness, depression, anxiety and stress, (DAS) and its correlates with background characteristics of the respondents. Materials and Method: Descriptive research design using cross-sectional face to face interview method was used for data collection. A total 74 out of 248 regular drinkers were selected using simple random sampling technique from Usilangulam, Kalayarkoil Block in Sivagangai district, Tamil Nadu, India. Socio-economic characteristics, self-esteem, hopelessness, depression, anxiety and stress were assessed using appropriate tools. Result: The results show that the average age of the alcoholics in the study area is 47.2 years, the average age at first drink was 20.7 years. Their average year of schooling was 8.7 years.  Their average annual family income was Rs. 3,83,077. It is also noticed that a sum of Rs. 194 was used for the purchase of alcohol per day. Majority of them scored high on hopelessness (57%), low on self-esteem (58%) and DASS (60%). The one-way ANOVA result shows that there is a statistically significant difference between current age, education, and family income in the mean score of depression, anxiety and stress (DAS) of the alcoholics. Further, the one-way MANOVA results indicate that there are statistically significant differences among the age group, education, occupation, family income, time of drinking and years of drinking habit on a linear combination of self-esteem, hopelessness and DAS scores of the alcoholics. Conclusion: Findings reveal that there is a need for formulating appropriate intervention strategies to increase self-esteem by reducing the hopelessness and depression anxiety and stress scores of alcoholics.

Keywords: Self-esteem, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, stress, alcoholics