Stress, Depression and Coping in Tuberculosis Patients- A Hospital Based Study

Context/Background: Tuberculosis (TB) often leaves its impact physically, socially and mentally on pa-tients. Coping strategies refer to the specific efforts, both behavioural and psychological, that people employ to master, tolerate, reduce or minimize stressful events. The study was started to find out the prevalence of Depression in Tuberculosis patients, to find out the effect of Stress and Depression on Cop-ing strategies in patients diagnosed with Tuberculosis. Methodology: The study was a Cross sectional study carried out for period of two years at District tu-berculosis centre, SNR Hospital, Kolar. Sample size calculated was 288. All data entered in Microsoft of-fice excel sheet, analyzed using SPSS v 22. Descriptive statistics applied where ever needed and to com-pare between groups t-test, ANOVA was used. To check for association between factors, Chi-square was applied. Results: Out of 302 Tuberculosis patients, 29.1% belonged to 41-50 years, 72.2%were male, 77.5% re-sided in rural area, 24.5% were unemployed, 4% had HIV comorbidity, 46.4% had Diabetes Mellitus. 138(45.7%) patients had Severe Depression. Age, Gender, HIV status, Diabetes status, Tb Patients who Perceived TB stigma, BMI, Perceived Family Support, type of family and occupation were few Clinico-social factors which were statistically significant for Perceived stress scores. Conclusions: Better management of psychiatric morbidities should be educated by the treating primary health care doctors and DOTS providers in chronic infectious diseases like Tuberculosis can have direct or indirect impact on improving treatment adherence, illness perception and patient coping skills.