Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing

Pages: 842-848
Deepa Ghosh (Department of Psychology, N. S. Mahavidyalaya, Udaipur, Tripura)

Today most of the women are maintaining dual roles of an employee and housewives with economic support to their family. The study examines the degree of anxiety and suicide risk among married women. It aims to investigate whether there are any differences between working and non working women on anxiety and suicide risk. Further it explores the relationship between anxiety and suicide risk. The sample comprises of 70 married women (working women-35; nonworking women-35). The mode values of the age of working and non working women were 39 and 41 years respectively. Suicide Probability Scale by J. Cull and W. Gill and Bengali version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) adapted by Nikhil B. Mallik and Prabal K. Chattopadhyay were used as instruments for this research. Besides descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency and dispersions; t-test were applied for verification of the hypotheses. Findings reveal insignificant difference between the two groups on trait anxiety. But significant difference exists between them on state anxiety. Study reveals that a notable number of women possess suicide risk. Further significant differences are found between them on hopelessness, negative self evaluation and suicidal ideation. But, the difference is insignificant on hostility. Further significant relationships are established between the different sub scales of suicide risk and anxiety. The results of the present study may be used retrospectively to create responsiveness among people about suicide risk of the women and ensure societal change and psychological intervention to lessen suicide risk and improve the mental health of the women. It can be used as a revelation for both the employees and employers who need to see this issue as grave and take corrective measures. However, closer look at the scenario makes us comprehend that working women face lot of problems involving both job and family.

Pages: 854-858
Saima Munir and Anwaar Mohyuddin (Department of Anthropology, Quaid-i-Azim University Islamabad, Pakistan)

This article deal with the information regarding the social and cultural causes of female reproductive health issues in tribal area, Koh-Sulman village Bahratii district Dera Gahzi khan Punjab. In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the status of woman in this region and the social and cultural causes that are the obstacles and leads to the serious issues of their reproductive health. The article reveal that social norms and cultural patterns like “nimorud system” (local Jirga or Sardar order that the women who have pregnancy of the accused family give the baby after the birth to the victim's family in form of marriage and can be named as marriage before birth.) gender base violence, negative attitude toward female birth and anti-attitude toward the use of contraceptives and family planning method that forced toward induced abortion that are the major causes of the female reproductive health problems. The present study will also analyze the deprivation of an area that has no basic health facilities and illiteracy that is a major hindrance in the development of the area. The data presented in this paper has been collected by using qualitative anthropological research technique.

Pages: 865-869
Antarjeeta Nayak and Jalandhar Pradhan (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha)

The concept of “Quality of Life” is much wider than standard of living or material living conditions. It takes into account the working conditions, the degree of social integration, health and education, economically or physically fragility. Only money can never be a real measure to quality of life. The paper is an effort to make a study on quality of life between the poor and the non-poor and to infer the impact of poverty on quality of life. Also, an attempt was made to assess the relation between the domains of Quality of Life. The study is conducted among 500 poor and 200 non-poor in the Rourkela city of Odisha. WHOQOL-BREF is used for the assessment of quality of life. Results from the analysis suggest that except the Social domain, all other domains of QOL such as overall QOL, overall Health, Physical domain, Psychological domain and Environmental domain, are having significant differences between poor and non-poor. However, interestingly, the analysis showed a highest mean score for Environmental domain of QOL among the poor compared to non-poor indicating a very good financial resource, opportunities for acquiring new information and skills, enjoying leisure activities, a high degree of freedom, physical safety and security, a better accessibility and quality of health and social care and a better home environment.

Pages: 874-884
Pooja Sahu (Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi)
Urmila Rani Srivastav and Madhu Jain (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University Varanasi)

Low birth weight has always been considered as the single most important factor of infant's future chances of survival, healthy growth and mortality. Women employees require special attention and protection during their pregnancy, because of pregnancy may decrease their capacity to cope withmany condition of working environment. Hence, the major objective of the present review was to examine the characteristics of working environment which are associated to adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery and low birth weight. Studies published since 1988 to 2014 were systematically reviewed, and analyzed. The specific risk factors which were the focus of this review were: occupational stress, occupational fatigue, long working hours, heavy lifting, prolonged standing and shift work during pregnancy. The review paper ended with implications, recommendations and concluding comments.

Pages: 890-894
Ranjana (Department of Psychology, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana)

The study was aimed to find out the relationship between personality and family environment on the basis of gender. The sample consisted of 200 students (100 boys and 100 girls), studying in different colleges of Kurukshetra district of Haryana. The age of the participants ranged between 17 and 21 years. The NEO- Personality Inventory and, Family Environment Scale were administered to collect data. The data were analyzed by using Pearson's Product Moment correlation and t test. The results of t test indicated significant difference in scores of neuroticism, agreeableness, active recreation orientation and organization for males and females. Females' correlation analysis indicated that neuroticism has strong negative correlations with cohesion, independence, active recreational orientation and organization and positive correlation with conflict. Extrovert personality has significant positive correlations with all the dimensions of family environment excluding expressiveness and moral religious orientation. Conscientiousness demonstrated strong positive correlations with achievement orientation, intellectual-cultural, active-recreational orientation and conflict. However, no association was found between openness and agreeableness, dimensions of personality with family environment. On the other hand male correlation analysis revealed that openness has strong positive correlation with independence, achievement orientation, intellectual and active recreational orientation. Agreeableness demonstrated positive correlation with cohesion and two strong negative correlations with conflict and control. Conscientious personality has strong positive correlation with moral religious orientation and organization. Neuroticism and extraversion were not found correlating with family environment.

Pages: 900-904
Rupali Joshi (Department of Psychology, Uttrakhand Open University, Haldwani )

The role of women in the society is constantly questioned and for centuries women have struggled to find their place in a world that is predominantly male oriented. Today number of women are successful in politics, technology and business etc. There is no profession today where women are not working. The sample consisted of 30 working and 30 non working women. Social Support scale by Arora and Kumar (1998), Modified Hindi version of Beck Depression by Arora and Prashant (1988) and Free Floating Anxiety Scale by Tripathi and Rastogi (1986) were used. There was no significant difference between working and non working women in anxiety and depression and social support. Anxiety was found to be correlated among working women in the areas of emotional support, informational support, companionship support and overall social support. Anxiety was not found to be correlated with any type of support among non working women. Depression was not found to be correlated with any type of social support among working women. Depression was found to be correlated among non working women on the areas of emotional support, companionship support and over all social support. Depression was not found to be correlated with informational support.

Pages: 910-913
Neha Parashar and C. R. Satish Kumar (Department of Clinical Psychology, Post-Graduate Institute of Behavioral and Medical Sciences, Raipur, Chhattisgarh )

Leprosy cases have reduced in great numbers now yet the existing affected population and the family members suffers with various social restrictions. These individuals have to deal with a poor quality of life and an ongoing struggle against stigma. The present study was aimed to study the Quality of life and Self Esteem in the adolescent children of patients with Leprosy. 100 students were selected from Jeevodaya School, Yesu Niwas Leprosy Rehabilitation Centre, Chhattisgarh and they were assessed on Rosenberg's self esteem scale (Rosenberg, M. 1989) and World Health Organisation Quality Of Life-BREF (WHO, 1996). Results showed that psychological health and environment were found to be comparatively higher than physical health and social relationship. The self esteem of the sample came out to be low that is 60% of the sample showed low self esteem followed by 40% showing average self esteem. Correlation between QOL and self esteem is relatively low; it is still a positive one, showing that a decrease or increase in the standards of quality of life affected the 'self-esteem' of the adolescents.

Pages: 919-923
R. S. Lal and A. P. Singh (Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh)

Generally, human life is not going on a straight way. It runs on a zig-zag line. If a person feels good today, it is not necessary to be happy tomorrow also. In searching of better solutions, facing these small and big problems, and making adjustment with current situations and environment, a person feels stress more or less. People often have too many demands placed on their time, are worried about uncertain futures and have little time for family and fun. Stress affects us at home, work, and even on holidays. It is also listened often that everyone should learn to “deal” or “cope” with stress in our life. Although a lot of stress models described illustrate how many different viewpoints there are of work stress, and show how complex these processes may be, a more comprehensive model of work stress has been suggested in this paper. This model gives an overview of how changes in the nature of many work environments have led to increase in workplace stress, and how it may be implicated in many stress-related physical and psychological problems. Many existing models suffer from being either narrow in scope or lacking a role for individual differences, and lacking in predictive validity. This model adds a new dimension to think again about the workplace stress which has now become a common phenomenon among the employees. Every organism faces challenges from its external environment and from its personal needs. The organism must solve these problems to survive and thrive. In such a complex and competitive job environment, to find proper solutions or skills to cope with workplace stress, an employee would first need to understand the nature and whole process of workplace stress and this model would be more helpful to understand the work stress, its nature and whole process including an important role of individual capacity which exists in every stage, so that the better psychological therapies and medicinal treatments may be discovered in future to help such several employees to improve their health in the interest of the concerned organizations because employees are considered as backbone of any organization for development.

Pages: 927-929
Vijaysen Pandey and Deepali Sansi (Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences, Amity University, Noida Uttar Pradesh )

The present study aimed to examine the family environment as perceived by the parents and its impact on the problem behaviors exhibited by children. It was a comparative study which was done between two groups of parents. The first group included parents of children with mental retardation and the second group had parents with children with no disability. The family environment measured different domains of the family and how the score of each domain in both the groups varied from each other. The problem behavior checklist assessed the behavior and conduct problems shown by children of both the groups. The results indicated a clear difference in the families of both the groups. It was also analyzed that children with Mental Retardation exhibited more behavioral problems.

Pages: 933-935
A.H. Bhat and K.C. Sharma (Department of Environmental Science, Central University of Rajasthan, Kishangarh, Ajmer, Rajasthan)

Salt workers are exposed to the hardship of environmental conditions such as direct sunlight, salt dust and contact with brine, which have an impact on the health of workers. In the process of salt manufacture, brine rich in salt is filled in broad pans exposed to sunlight. To assess their awareness, attitude and practices related to occupational health problems, 250 Salt workers were interviewed about problems and health hazards related to their working conditions, usage of protective measures and suggestions for their improvisation.

Pages: 943-946
Sarah Hussain and Deepshikha Ray (Department of Psychology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata)

The study aimed to explore certain psychosocial variables, namely, self esteem, body image, obedience and piety in Indian Muslim male youths who underwent circumcision between the ages of 1 month to 3 years (early circumcision) and those between the ages of 8 to10 years (late circumcision). A sample of 90 participants (Early circumcised=50 and Late circumcised=40) belonging to the age range of 20 to 28 years with minimum qualification of pursuing under graduation were investigated on the above mentioned variables. The participants completed the following inventories for assessment- Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965); Body Image Concern Inventory (Littletona, Axsom, & Pury, 2005); The Religiosity and Spirituality Scale for Youth (Hernandez, 2011); Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (Altemeyer, 1981). The obtained data revealed that there is no significant difference between the two groups, that is, early circumcised and late circumcised Muslim males with regard to self esteem, body image concern, obedience and piety. The results were interpreted in terms of psychosocial and cultural constructs. The present study contributes by shading light upon the psychological impact of a traditional religious practice involving as sensitive an area as one's genitals. Along with the physiological impact of circumcision, a considerable deepening influence of it on the mental disposition is thought to exist. The results of the study are in stark contradiction to Western literature which highlights the detrimental psychological effects of circumcision. The results have been interpreted in terms of psycho-social and socio-cultural constructs.

Pages: 953-957
Gadiraju Padmaja, Tiamongla, Suvashisa Rana, and Vanlalhruaii, C. (Centre for Health Psychology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad)
Sunanda Mohapatra (DAV Public School, Unit 8, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha)

Entering into university level education often poses challenges, both academics as well as life, especially when it demands people to leave their houses and stay in hostels. The present study was conceptualised to measure the general self-efficacy and quality of life of students who approached universities for higher study and to examine whether the differences in place of living and gender affect their self-efficacy and quality of life. Two hundred and forty university students were assessed on their self-efficacy and quality of life using General Self-efficacy Scale and World Health Organisation-Quality of Life BREF questionnaire. The data were analysed by means of descriptive statistics, 2 (place of living) X 2 (gender) between-subjects ANOVA, product moment correlation (r), and line graph. Both place of living and gender played significant role in the university students' self-efficacy and quality of life. The students who lived in their home and women were found to have greater self-efficacy as well as better quality of life compared to the students who lived in hostel and men respectively. It was also observed that women who stayed in hostel were more vulnerable to psychological health issues. The results demonstrate a need for designing interventions that target enhancing self-efficacy in hostel boarders as well as men students such that their quality of life be improved.