53 Health Sciences Quarterly, Volume: 1/ Issue: 2 / Year: 2021 Content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Corresponding Author: Shamima Parvin Lasker Email: splasker04@yahoo.com Citation: Islam MS, Akter F, Lasker SP. Relationship between depression and socio-demographic and illness characteristics in arsenicosis population of Bangladesh. Health Sci Q. 2021;2:53-61. https://doi.org/10.26900/hsq.1.2.01 Relationship between depression and socio-demographic and illness characteristics in arsenicosis population of Bangladesh Mohammad Saiful Islam 1 Shamima Parvin Lasker 3 1 Program Manager (Research), Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Mohakhali / Bangladesh 2 Department of Epidemiology, National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine, Mohakhali, Dhaka / Bangladesh 3 Department of Anatomy, Shahabuddin Medical College, Dhaka / Bangladesh Abstract A community based cross-sectional study was carried out by a self-structured questionnaire on 168 participants aged between 18 and 60 years at two arsenic prone area of Bangladesh to determine the association between extent of depression and socio-demographic as well as illness characteristics in arsenicosis population. The mean age ± SD was 42 ± 10.15 years. Female respondents were almost twice (63.1%) than the males (36.9%) in this study. Most of the respondents (94.0%) were shallow tube well water user. Among them most (80.0%) of the respondents were detected as arsenic contaminated water consumer over more than six months. Study estimated that almost half (44.3%) of the participants had suffered from mild to moderate depression in the moderate arsenicosis group. Less than quarter (20.8%) participants suffered severe depression in severe arsenicosis group. Quarter (26.7%) had mild arsenicosis with no depression. This difference was not signifcant. Gender had signifcant infuence on proportion of level of depression. Females signifcantly suffered more from depressive symptoms than males. More than two third of the female respondents suffered from some kind of depressive symptoms; where less than one third of the males were suffered from depressive symptoms. Age has no signifcant relation with depression. Respondents who were 48 years and above age group had highest percentages of severe depressive symptoms (35.8%). This age group also suffered from highest percentage of mild to moderate depression (37.1%). Though most of the respondent (85.1) had no diabetes and hypertension. Respondents with physical illness suffered more from some sorts of depression than those without illness, but the result is not statistically signifcant. We understood that depression has health challenges in adult arsenicosis patients. Therefore, physicians should take account depression in their treatment management when deal with arsenicosis patients. Keywords: Depression, arsenic, arsenicosis, age, gender hypertension, diabetes, Bangladesh Volume : 1 Issue : 2 2021 E-ISSN: 2791-6022 https://journals.gen.tr/jsp Received: 2021-05-29 Accepted: 2021-07-05 HEALTH SCIences Quarterly ORIGINAL ARTICLE Fahmida Akter 2 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by PhilPapers