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Background: Stigma among mental disorders like anxiety has been identified as an important barrier in help-seeking by national policymakers. Anxiety disorders are quite common among college students, and their severity and prevalence are growing. This study aimed to assess help-seeking behavior (HSB) towards anxiety among undergraduate students of Kathmandu University (KU). Methodology: A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 422 undergraduate students. General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) tool was used to assess HSB. Frequencies, percentages, mean, and Standard Deviation were calculated to assess the characteristics of the participants. Factors associated with HSB were examined using Chi-Square test. Pearson correlation was determined to find out the association between professional and informal sources for seeking help. All the tests were carried out at the statistically significant level at a P-value of 0.05. Results: The mean (±SD) age was 20.3±1.1 years in this study. This study demonstrated that 36.5 and 17.5% of the participants were extremely likely to seek help from parents and psychiatrists towards anxiety, respectively. Sex (OR=1.5, 95% CI: 1.0-1.3) was significantly associated with parents, education was significantly associated with parents (OR=0.4, 95% CI: 0.2-0.6), and friends (OR=0.5, 95% CI: 0.3-0.9), meanwhile, ethnicity (OR=0.6, 95% CI: 0.4-0.9), and residence (OR=0.5, 95% CI: 0.3-0.8) were significantly associated with psychiatrists and psychologists for help-seeking behavior, respectively. Fear of criticism (34.1%) and stigma (20.3%) were the main reasons for not seeking help among the participants. The maximum number of participants (41.5%) preferred to seek help immediately if they ever experienced anxiety. This study showed professional and informal sources were positively correlated with anxiety (rpi=0.3) at a P-value <0.05. Conclusion: This study showed that students preferred to seek help from informal sources rather than professional sources. In addition, there is still stigma and fear among students regarding mental health. This study suggests that there is a need to have psychosocial intervention at colleges and educational institutions in order to promote professional help-seeking for any mental disorders including anxiety.
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INTRODUCTION: Childhood obesity, caused due to excessive fat accumulation, is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths associated with several non-communicable diseases. In Nepal, there is limited data available on the status of overweight and obesity among school children. The objective of this study was to find out the prevalence of childhood overnutrition among school going children in a municipality. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from June 2019 to July 2019, in four schools of a municipality selected by simple random sampling. Ethical approval was obtained from Nepal Health Research Council (Registration number 380/2019). Data was collected using census sampling from children aged 5-18 years through self-administered questionnaires to the children's parents. The data was entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences for analysis. Point estimate at 95% confidence interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data. RESULTS: Out of 379 school children, the prevalence of overnutrition was found to be 38 (10.03%) (95% Confidence Interval= 7.01-13.05). Prevalence of overnutrition was highest in children of age group 10-13 years 23 (60.5%), in females 27 (71.1%), those consuming junk food 4-6 times weekly 14 (36.8%) and those performing daily physical activity less than 60 minutes 24 (63.2%). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of childhood overnutrition is similar in comparison to other studies done in similar settings.
