Measuring the prevalence of depression and anxiety among the ever married women in informal settlements of Dhaka & assessing inter-tool consistency: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: The burden of mental health disorders is rapidly escalating into a global crisis, particularly in low income countries like Bangladesh. Residents facing poor living conditions in informal settlements in Dhaka, face increased mental and physical health challenges, with women at a higher risk for disorders such as depression and anxiety. This study aims to evaluate the use of two specific tools in assessing the mental health disorders of ever-married women aged 18-64. The tools used to measure anxiety are GAD-7 and Beck Anxiety Inventory and depression are PHQ-9 and Beck Depression Inventory-II. Furthermore, this study examines the consistency of scores gathered from these instruments across different severity levels of each condition. Method: 316 residents from the informal settlements of Shyampur and Dakshinkhan areas of Dhaka City participated in our study. After excluding incomplete questionnaires, 292 were included in the final analysis. Our questionnaire was based on the Bengali version of four existing tools. We conducted descriptive and bivariate analyses to measure prevalence and performed chi-square tests to check score consistency across severity levels of depression and anxiety. Findings: In ever-married women aged 18-64 in informal settlements, anxiety prevalence is 55.82% on the GAD-7 scale and 59.25% on the BAI. Depression prevalence is 62.67% on the PHQ-9 and 50.00% on the BDI-II. The consistency of GAD-7 and BAI scores for minimal and severe levels of anxiety are 70.54% and 81.25%, respectively. For depression, minimal and severe case consistency is 85.32% and 100%. Conclusion: This study revealed higher anxiety and depression among participants, highlighting the need for increased budget allocations for mental health care. The government should also improve the availability and accessibility of services for women and draw attention to raising mental health awareness. Notably, the anxiety and depression rates from the two tools were similar, indicating they can be used interchangeably when specific conditions are not present.