ABSTRACT
Background: Bipolar disorder is one of the common chronic serious mental illness affecting 7 billion people in the world associated with significant morbidity which goes unrecognized. After extensive literature search, it was found that there is paucity of studies from the Indian setting that have addressed the issue of bipolar disorder.Methods: The present study was carried out to screen for bipolar disorder among medical undergraduate students and its correlates. Due to non-availability of many studies from India, the proportion of 50% was taken as prevalence to calculate the sample size. With 95% confidence interval and 8% absolute error, a sample size of 126 was calculated using Epi Info. Study tools used were a semi structured questionnaire on socio-demographic profile of participants, Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) and Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ). MDQ is a self-reporting screening instrument for bipolar disorder having a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.83. Data was analyzed using chi-square test with p value <0.05 considered statistically significant.Results: The study included 87.3% males and 12.7% females with mean age 21.26±1.23 years. Out of 126 participants, 17 (13.5%) were screened positive for bipolar disorder. Factors found to have statistically significant association with bipolar disorder were number of siblings, type of family, migration status of family, living in hostel, body mass index and physical activity of the participant. Conclusions: The results suggest that medical students constitute a vulnerable group and there are certain risk factors other than academic stressors which predispose a medical student to mental illness.
ABSTRACT
The government of India has joined hands with the rest of the world aiming at universal health coverage (UHC) and has set the target for 2022. The huge population, the difficult land terrain, unequal distribution of health care system, socio-economic and cultural factors are posing serious challenges. Public private partnership (PPP) even though not exactly a novel concept, some innovations can tackle these challenges to an extent and give us a smooth track towards UHC. In the past, PPP models were utilized to some extent for development and refurbishment of health infrastructure. But expanding the partnership between the two sectors to human resource, service delivery and financial management with supervision and monitoring by the government may bring out the needed significant difference.