PSYCHIATRIC CASENESS IN THE PERSON EXPOSED TO CIVIL WAR IN NEPAL

Abstract

Background: Civil war carries an enormous impact on psychological health of the population, but poorly understood. The objective of this study was to study the relationship between war expo­sure and psychiatric caseness.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Jaimuni municipality of Baglung district of Nepal in 220 participants. The participants scoring more than or equal to 3 in the General Health Questionnaire-12 was labelled as “psychiatric caseness”. The participants were then interviewed regarding their civil war exposure.

Results: The prevalence of psychiatric caseness was 47.7% in the war exposed samples. War ex­posed samples were found to be suffering from psychiatric caseness (47.7%) more often than non-exposed samples (28.4%) and there was a statistical significance between exposure to war and psychiatric caseness (p=0.005).

Conclusions: There is a relationship between psychiatric caseness and war exposure in a statistical significant way. Future mental health policy of Nepal should address the mental health problems of war exposed population.