Introduction: Postmenopausal women experience various menopause-specific somatic, psychological, and urogenital symptoms which tend to affect their overall well-being. However, there is a scant focus on menopausal health problems of postmenopausal women in Nepal. The aim of the study was to find out the prevalence of menopausal symptoms among postmenopausal women of a Municipality. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in selected wards of Tokha Municipality of Kathmandu district among postmenopausal women aged 45-60 years from September to October 2019. Ethical approval was taken from the Ethical Review Board, Nepal Health Research Council (reference number 694). Random sampling was used as the sampling technique. Face-to-face interview was used for data collection while a semi-structured interview schedule including the Nepali version of Menopause Rating Scale was used as a tool for measuring menopausal symptoms. EpiData version 3.1 was used for data entry while data analysis was performed using Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences version 20. Results: Amongst the postmenopausal women, all 203 (100%) had menopausal symptoms with majority reporting milder symptoms as found in 143 (70.4%). The mean Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) score was obtained as 13.21±5.1. The most prevalent moderate and mild symptoms were vaginal dryness 94 (46.3%), and depressive mood 71 (35%) respectively while physical and mental exhaustion 175 (86.2%) was the most common in all forms. Over half 102 (50.2%) of the respondents were unaware of menopausal symptoms and almost three-fifth 121 (59.6%) reported menopause related symptoms affected their daily work activities. Conclusions: The majority of postmenopausal women in this study had milder menopausal symptoms, which parallels findings from other national studies.

Postnatal depression is linked with adverse outcomes for mothers, offspring, and her entire family, which stands as a significant public health problem and is often taken as a neglected issue of maternal and child health in the developing world. Postnatal depression is often falsely interpreted as common consequences related to the recent delivery. The main objective of this study is to find out the status of postnatal depression and the factors associated with it among the postnatal mothers attending at Bharatpur Hospital. Methodology. A total of 242 postnatal women were included in a hospital-based cross-sectional descriptive study. A systematic random sampling technique was done to get the sampling interval. Face to face interview technique was used for data collection, and depressive symptoms were measured by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Data was entered in Epi-Data and imported to SPSS for analysis. The data were summarized in terms of frequency (percentage), mean (SD), or median (IQR) as per necessity for descriptive analysis. The chi-square test and binary logistic regression were performed to find out the association between the covariates and depression status, assuming significance at p value <0.05. Results. The study revealed that the prevalence of postnatal depression was 16.9% by EPDS at cutoff point ≥12. It was found that postnatal depression was associated with current age, smoking, pressure to conceive a child, intent of pregnancy, and delivery-related complications. Conclusion. Postnatal depression within six months of delivery was found among nearly one-fifth of women, where 13.6% also had suicidal thoughts. More than half of the postnatal women had an early marriage. It is recommended that mothers with high risk should be routinely screened for postnatal depression followed by necessary interventions as well as safe motherhood counseling.

Background: Abortion was legalized in Nepal in September 2002 by the amendment to the “Muluki Ain”. Legal, moral and ethical issues surrounding abortion make research on all aspects of abortion difficult to undertake. The objective of this study is to assess knowledge and attitude regarding abortion among women of reproductive age group (15-45 years). Methods: This study was a descriptive and conducted in Manipal Teaching Hospital (MTH), Pokhara, Nepal. The tools were demographic proforma, knowledge questionnaire and attitude scale on abortion. Data was collected by asking questions regarding abortion. The total sample was 100 and the sampling technique was purposive. The data were analyzed using Excel 2007, SPSS for Windows Version 16.0 Results: The majority (83%) of the participant were of age group 15-30years, most (70%) of them were married, most (82%) of them were Hindu. The majority of the participants (95%) had heard regarding Abortion. About half (55%) got information from mass media. Most (58%) of the women are having average knowledge regarding Abortion, and the remaining 4% is having poor knowledge. The majority (90%) of the women have a good attitude and no one is having an unfavorable attitude. There is a significant association between knowledge and level of education. There is a positive correlation between knowledge and attitude. Conclusion: Though the majority of the women had a good attitude regarding abortion, still few women i.e. 4% attending MTH don’t have good knowledge.   Key Words: Abortion, Attitude, knowledge, Reproductive Age

Introduction Children from low-resource settings are more likely to encounter those factors that adversely influence their ability to acquire developmental potential. This study was conducted to assess the developmental status and its associated factors among children under five years of slum areas of Butwal Sub Metropolitan City, Rupandehi, Nepal. Methods and findings We conducted a community-based cross-sectional descriptive study using Developmental Milestone Chart (DMC) among 165 children under five years. Ethical approval was obtained from Ethical Review Board of Nepal Health Research Council. R software was used for data analysis. The association between developmental status and associated factors were examined with Chi-square and followed by logistic regression. Notably, more than half of the children (56.4%) had delayed development across two or more domains of gross motor, fine motor, language/ speech, and social development. Age, sex, socio-economic status, availability of learning materials, the occurrence of infectious diseases, and height-for-age of children were found to be significantly associated with the developmental status of children under study (p<0.05). Conclusions More than half of the children taken under the study had delayed development on different four domains. Findings from the study suggest that there should be similar studies conducted among children living in slum-like conditions. Additionally, programs should be designed as such which aims to mitigate the effect of socio-economic status on child development and has learning and nutritional aspects embedded central to its deliverance.

No abstract

Background: Since the wave of COVID-19, human life has highly been affected due to government endorsement of containment measures to control the disease. Education system has been held back and students are one of those who are greatly affected. Thus, this study attempts to find out the mental health status of Nepalese students during novel coronavirus Disease (nCOVID-19) pandemic. Methodology: A web-based cross sectional descriptive study was conducted from 9 May to 29 May 2020 among students of Nepal aged 18 years and above. A structured questionnaire was adopted from DASS-21. The obtained data were entered in Epidata v.3.1. and were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive frequency, percent and mean were calculated, and chi-square test was performed for bivariate analysis. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 21.4±2.7 years. This study found optimal mental health status among Nepalese students. Perceived family relationship however, showed statistical significance in all three mental health parameters (p<0.001); depression, anxiety and stress. Depression was found to be comparatively more in females (p<0.05), and those who held Bachelor’s and above degrees have shown presence of anxiety (p<0.05) and stress (p<0.05) relatively than those holding below degrees. Conclusion: Optimal mental health status among Nepalese students was found during the nationwide lockdown. Perceived family relationship however, showed statistical significance in all three mental health parameters. This is a wake-up call for education system to focus on socio-emotional skills – empathy and solidarity in easing this pandemic crisis confronted by young learners and their families.

No abstract

The article explores on the theoretical and empirical evidences of growing suicide trend in Nepal from psychological perspective. Nepal has been witnessing the increasing suicidal attempts since the last two decades. The paper is developed based on the secondary sources of data. The published research papers, government information, suicide recorded information of police headquarter, governmental and non-governmental reports are the major sources of information. The study found that various socioeconomic, demographic, cultural, biological factors to mental illness such as anxiety, disorder and hopelessness are critical issues for suicide attempts in Nepal. It is argued that socio-environmental, cross-cultural, demographic factors have contributed to develop mental illness. If mental illness is not addressed timely then suicidal attempt is likely to happen. Government response to prevent suicidal attempt is not sufficient. Based on the second generation, theoretical understanding and prevention measures are crucial for the prevention.