Background: Mental illness have been largely ignored or neglected because of a community's perception and attached social stigma. Materials and Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in an urban community in South Delhi to study perception and attitude of the community about towards mental illness. An adult member in household selected by systematic random sampling was interviewed using semi-structured interview schedule for perception about mental illness and 34 item Opinion about Mental Illness for Chinese Community (OMICC) scale Results: A total of 100 adults were interviewed. Mean age of the participants was 35.8 (SD: 12.6) years. Living without tension and satisfaction in routine life were identified as indicators of healthy mental status. Change in the behavior was perceived as the most common symptom of mental illness. Although mental stress was identified as the most common cause of mental illness, 25% attributed it to evil spirits. Keeping surroundings friendly and sharing problems with others were identified as - important preventive measures against mental illness. Mental illness was perceived as treatable; 12% preferred treatment from Tantric/Ojha. Community showed negative attitude for stereotyping, restrictiveness, and pessimistic prediction domains of OMICC scale with mean score of 4.5 (SD: 0.2), 3.9 (SD: 0.9), and 3.8 (SD: 0.4), respectively, with no statistically significant difference across age, sex, and literacy. Conclusion: Study observed lack of awareness regarding bio-medical concept of mental illness with socially restrictive, stereotyping, pessimistic, and non-stigmatizing attitude toward mental illness in the capital city.

Mental Health Literacy (MHL) is the ability to recognize mental disorders, along with knowledge of professional help available, effective self-help strategies, skills to give support to others, and knowledge of how to prevent mental disorders. Adequate MHL is linked to better health-seeking behavior and management of mental illness. To assess the MHL related to depression and anxiety among adolescents of age 15 to 19 years residing in Delhi A survey was conducted among adolescents in southeast Delhi. MHL was assessed using sex-matched vignettes of Common Mental Disorders (CMDs) like depression and anxiety. MHL was assessed under domains of identifications of disorders, help-seeking behavior, knowledge about prevention, and stigmatizing attitude toward the respective illness. Statistical analysis was done in STATA and percentage of participants with adequate MHL in various domains was calculated, and difference between various groups was examined using chi-square test. A total of 491 adolescents participated (response rate of 87.2%) of whom a 50.3% were girls and 57.8% were 15 to 17 years of age. Only 50 (10.2%) participants identified depression vignette as that of depression and 51 (10.4%) identified vignette of anxiety disorder as the same. No statistically significant gender differential in MHL was seen (p value = .8). The stigmatizing attitude, assessed by asking a series of questions suggesting stigma toward the particular illness, was observed among almost all participants (depression -99.4%, and anxiety disorders -96.1%). 18.3% and 18.7% of participants reported correct knowledge about the prevention of depression and anxiety respectively. Four hundred and twenty-two (86%) identified the need to seek help for symptoms reported in vignettes. Of these, 234 (55%) preferred parents, and 62 (14.7%) look after friends for any help. Adolescents residing in Delhi reported poor MHL for Common Mental Disorders. High stigma and poor help-seeking behavior was also observed among the participants toward CMDs

A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out in an urban resettlement colony in South Delhi to study the prevalence of knee osteoarthritis in women aged ≥40 years and treatment seeking behavior of women suffering from osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis was diagnosed by using clinical criteria given by American College of Rheumatology for diagnosis of Idiopathic Osteoarthritis of knee joints. A total 260 women were interviewed out of which 123 (47.3%) women were found to be suffering from knee osteoarthritis. Prevalence of osteoarthritis found to be increased with age. Less than half of those with osteoarthritis underwent treatment. With this high prevalence of osteoarthritis, there is need to spread awareness about the disease, its prevention, and rehabilitation in the community.

Background: Mental disorders during pregnancy is one of the major public health problem because of its effect on both mother and child. Objectives: The objective of the study was to assess the burden of common mental disorders (CMDs) among pregnant women in rural Haryana, North India. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 28 villages of rural Haryana in 2016. Pregnant women in the study area with period of gestation 25–34 weeks were enrolled and assessed for presence of CMDs in two phases. Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders—Patient Health Questionnaire was used for screening and Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) for diagnosis of CMDs. Results: A total of 457 pregnant women were included in the study. Mean age of pregnant women was 23.9 years (SD- 3.9). Prevalence of CMDs was 15.3% (95% CI, 12.0–18.6). Of these, major depression was 2.8% (95% CI, 1.4– 4.4), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder was 15.1% (95% CI, 11.8–18.4) as per MINI. On multivariate analysis, no statistically significant association was found between CMDs during pregnancy with any obstetric, sociodemographic determinants, and child health outcomes. Conclusion: High prevalence of CMDs, especially anxiety, observed among pregnant women in rural area necessitates the need for integration of screening of CMDs during routine antenatal care in India.

Timely, affordable, and sustained interventions reduce the risk of heart attack or Stroke in people with a high total risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Risk prediction tools are available to estimate the cardiovascular risk using information on multiple variables. CVD risk charts prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) has laboratory-based and non-laboratory-based charts with the latter meant for use in resource limited settings. We conducted a study to determine concordance between the laboratory- and non-laboratory risk charts and to estimate the prevalence of selected CVD risk factors in a rural Indian population. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in rural area of Ballabgarh in district Faridabad, Haryana. Sample of 1,018 participants aged 30–69 years was selected randomly from study area. Information on CVDs risk factors was obtained using WHO STEPS questionnaire, anthropometry and laboratory investigation. Risk distribution among the study participants was observed. Concordance between laboratory- and non-laboratory-based WHO CVD risk charts was determined using agreement analysis. The mean age of the study participants was 43.9 (8.9) years and 55.6% participants were women. Among various CVD risk factors, hypertension (39.4%) was the major factor followed by overweight (34.1%) was found to be major factor, followed by current smoking (23.6%) and hypercholesterolemia (18.7%). The concordance between the two charts was 83.3% with kappa value of 0.64. Considering laboratory-based charts as the gold standard, the sensitivity and specificity of non-laboratory-based risk charts at 5% risk as cut-off was 86.5% and 90.3% respectively. The study shows a good agreement between the laboratory-based and non-laboratory-based risk charts. Thus non-laboratory-based risk charts are suitable for risk estimation of CVDs for use in resource limited settings like India.