Zeitschrift für Suchtforschung und -therapie

Abstrakt

Pattern of Tobacco Use among Outdoor Depressed Patients Reported for Private Psychiatric Consultation at Karachi

Muhammad Iqbal Afridi, Mubashar Shah and Rozeena Ameen

Objective: To estimate the pattern of tobacco use among outdoor, depressed patients reported for private psychiatric consultation at Karachi.
Method: This observational study is based on cases reported at a private psychiatric clinic in Karachi from 1stJanuary, 2012 to 31st December 2012. A total of 178 patients, consecutively diagnosed as Depressive disorder according to ICD-10 were selected. All patients were male and their age range was from 18 years to 70 years. Their mean age with standard deviation was 36.16 ± 12.01 years. Informed consent, in all the patients, was taken. Approval from IRB (Institutional Review Board) Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi was obtained. The approved protocol was used in the study overseeing the ethical and legal aspects of the clinical investigations. Data was tabulated and analysed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the data.
Results: Total number of depressed patients screened was1445. Out of these 178 patients was using tobacco. Their average age ± SD were 36.16 ± 12.01 years .The age range was from 18 to 70 years. Out of 178 cases, 139(78.1%) cases were married, 28(15.7%) were unmarried, and 6(3.4%) had second marriages, and the rest were engaged, divorced or separated. Their ethnic languages were Pushto (65.7%); Urdu (12.4%), Punjabi (5.1%), Sindhi (7.3%), Balochi (3.4%), and the rest were from other ethnic languages. The pattern of tobacco use was, smoking only (32.58%), chewing Paan (37.07%), using Naswar (14.60%), while the rest (15.73%) chewed and smoked in combination.
Conclusion: This study revealed that depressive disorder has co-morbidity of tobacco use invariably among younger married males. Contrary to the western pattern, majority of the cases were using tobacco in forms other than smoking only.