A Study to Assess the Psychological Distress and Quality of Life Among Family Members of Patients with Alcohol Dependence Admitted in Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences (BIMS), Hospital at Belagavi

Abstract

Background: alcoholism is the term used to describe excessive alcohol consumption that harms a person, society, or both. Abuse of alcohol can cause a breach between family members and ruin relationships. Objective: To assess the psychological distress and quality of life among 100 family members of patients with alcohol dependence. To find out correlation between level of psychological distress and level of quality of life among family members of patients with alcohol dependence. To find out association between psychological distress and quality of life with selected sociodemographic variables of family members of patients with alcohol dependence. Methods and materials: quantitative research approach and descriptive research design has been adopted. Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used to select the samples. Modified Kessler’s psychological distress scale and modified WHOQOL-BREF scale were used to assess psychological distress and quality of life respectively. Analysis: descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: the study results revealed that majority of the family members 78 (78%) experiencing very high level of psychological distress ,19(19%) of family members were experiencing high level of psychological distress, 3(3%) moderate level of psychological distress and none of them had low level of psychological distress. Majority of family members 57(57%) had high quality of life, 35(35%) of family members had moderate level of quality of life and 8(8%) of family member had low quality of life. Conclusion: alcohol dependence not only affect alcoholic person but also has its impact on family members. They experiencing very high level of psychological distress and they were struggling to lead quality of life. It’s important to consider the family members and to develop various intervention strategies to reduce distress and to improve the over health as well as quality of life of family members.