ABSTRACT
Background: Infertility is more prevalent nowadays and affects both males and females. It is an extremely challenging and unpredictable situation with social, interpersonal, and financial consequences. Therefore, it affects psychological health and quality of life of the couple. We assessed psychiatric morbidity and quality of life among couples and the relationship of duration of infertility with psychological burden, along with comparison between primary and secondary infertility. Methodology: 75 couples attending a tertiary care hospital in the age range of 18-45 years fulfilling the criteria for infertility and consenting for the study were interviewed and DASS 21 and WHO-QOL BREF was applied to analyze depression, anxiety, stress, and quality of life. Patients with previous psychiatric illness, intellectual disability was excluded. Results: The mean age of males and females was 29.6 years with 75% couples of primary infertility and 25% of secondary infertility. Females showed a higher range of psychiatric morbidity than males with 56% females and 12.2% males had depression, 56% females and 18.1% males had anxiety, 88% females and 66.7% were stressed. The data was clinically significant for anxiety in males and for stress in both males and females. QOL had scores on the lower side with non-significant association between primary and secondary infertility. Conclusions: Infertility has an impact on psychological health, and it affects females more than males. It also impairs QOL of the couple and hence there is need for an integrated approach to reach favorable outcomes.
ABSTRACT
Objectives: Food Fortification program is being implemented in Rajasthan, India by fortifying milk, flour and oil with essential micronutrients. The challenge is to make food fortification commonplace so that it can address the devastating effects of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, particularly among the vulnerable populations. The objective of the study was to develop appropriate positioning strategy for fortified foods. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive research design was used to assess the buying behavior and perceived costs and benefits of the consumers towards fortified products. A total of 1011 respondents were interviewed across four cities of Rajasthan. Using Kuppuswamy’s socio economic scale (2012), the analysis was done as per socio-economic class. Using Rothschild’s framework (1999) which helps in describing the relationship between various activities in terms of individual decision-making and perceived costs and benefits, positioning strategies were identified to create continuous demand for the fortified products from the consumers’ side. Results: It was found that about 63.6% were consuming wheat grains. Of this, 62% and 51.9 % reported trust and purity as the reason behind using grains. Of those who were buying flour, majority (46.5%) attributed the reason to less time consumption and about 34% were made aware of the current brand by the retailer. Conclusions: Positioning fortified flour as a hallmark of purity and also which consumes less time could result in its acceptance. Retailers are required to be used as ambassadors for influencing the decision of the people. Selling and resistance points for fortified foods have been used for positioning.