Publication:

Assessment of quality of life in alcohol dependents taking treatment in government de-addiction centre, Chennai

Background Heavy alcohol drinking is a major public health problem in most of the developing countries. Each year about 3.3 million deaths is caused by alcohol consumption and this is the main causal factor for about 200 various diseases that contributes about 5.9% deaths. Quality of life (QoL) is affected in alcohol dependents significantly. This study was conducted to determine the QoL of alcohol dependent patients in government de-addiction centre and to study the factors associated with the QoL of alcohol dependents.

Methods Across sectional study done using validated semi structured questionnaire contains sociodemographic details, SADD and WHO QoL-BREF-26 questionnaire.

Results Almost half of the participants (46.7%) were less than 30 years old. The major portion of the participants (70%) belonged to the lower class. Almost half of them (46.6%) were either unmarried or separated. Major portion of the participants of the study population are having medium (46.67%) and high level (40%) of dependence. Around 83.3%of the participants were affected by any one of the psychiatric co-morbidities. Around 2/3rd of participants (66.7%) are started to work before the legal age to work. Half of the alcohol dependents (53.33%) having family members with harmful alcohol intake behaviour. The mean baseline score of QoL of study subjects were compared to the mean scores of the healthy individuals.

Conclusions The QoL is the most valuable tool for the interventional management and designing the management programme. Around 80% of the study population are literate and 90% of the study population having good intention towards recovery.