Background: Arthritis means inflammation of the joints. Arthritis can be caused due a variety of local and systemic illnesses, the most common among them being osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis can affect men, women and children. Determining the quality of life among osteoarthritis patients will provide important information for planning future cost effective preventive strategies and health care services.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted among 199 symptomatic arthritis patients. Arthritis impact measurement scale 2 (AIMS 2) was administered to assess Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of the participants.Results: Total of 199 subjects was included in the study. The mean age of study subjects was 62.1±14.8 years. When looked into the 12 component model of AIMS 2 it was evident that arthritis pain had the highest negative impact on quality of life with a median score of 7.12. This was followed by difficulty in walking and bending (median score 6.6) and tension in life (median score 6.06). Arthritis had low impact in the domains of work, arm movements, household tasks, hand and finger function and self-care tasks. The five component model also reemphasizes the above finding with ‘symptoms’ of arthritis contributing the most to quality of life whereas the domain of ‘role’ contributing the least to quality of life.Conclusions: Over all arthritis had a significant impact on quality of life. Arthritis pain had the highest negative impact on quality of life. This was followed by difficulty in walking and bending and tension in life.
Antenatal anxiety and depression have been known to be associated with poor maternal and fetal outcomes. There is paucity of data from rural areas of India on these factors and their outcomes. Hence we conducted a study to estimate the prevalence of psychological stress and high risk for anxiety among pregnant women in a hospital in rural South India, and to determine the association with various socio-demographic and obstetric variables of importance in the rural Indian context. This was a cross-sectional study conducted among antenatal women using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) scale and Perinatal Anxiety Screening Scale (PASS). Women with a score of K10 ≥16 were considered to have psychological distress and PASS score of ≥26 were considered as high risk for anxiety. The prevalence of Psychological Stress (K10≥16) among the 209 antenatal women in this study was estimated to be 29.7%, with prevalence rate being significantly higher in the second trimester as compared to the third trimester. 64 (30.6%) women had high risk for anxiety Consumption of alcohol by the husband and fewer years of education in husband were found to significantly increase the risk of anxiety or psychological distress among antenatal women. There was a significantly positive correlation between K10 and PASS scores with a correlation coefficient of 0.654 (p=0.0001). With nearly a third of antenatal women in the study suffering from psychological distress and a high risk of anxiety, there is definite evidence for including screening for psychological distress and anxiety during routine antenatal visits.
Speaking in English is always a tough challenge for second language learners. It is a proven fact that anxiety is considered as one of the main factors responsible for speaking difficulty. An increasingly significant area of research and emerging trends in teaching and learning English language highlight speaking anxiety, methods, strategies and techniques that can be adopted to alleviate anxiety. Activity-based teaching is an effective and interesting method that can be adopted to enhance speaking skills of the learners. The present study focuses on the impact of group activity by incorporating a Four-dimensional integrated strategy: motivation, explaining rubrics, skill integration and grouping. Activity based intervention was given to 105 students who are pursuing Engineering Programmes in different disciplines in Chennai, India. Data was collected before and after the intervention to identify the existence of anxiety and to analyse the difference in anxiety levels. The results prove the effectiveness of Four-dimensional integrated strategy based group activity in alleviating speaking anxiety.
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