Psychological distress and its associated factors among people with specific chronic conditions

The majority of people with long-term, non-communicable medical conditions experience significant psychological anguish. Poor mental health or psychological distress influences low lifestyle decisions that result in obesity, inactivity, and cigarette use as well as poor health literacy and limited access to health promotion activities. The study's purpose was to measure the prevalence of psychological distress and it's predictors in patients with chronic non-communicable diseases who were being treated in selected hospitals in the Sidama region of southern Ethiopia in 2022. Institutional based cross-sectional study was carried out using a sample of 844 patients receiving medication for either high blood pressure or diabetes mellitus or both between May1 and August 31, 2022. To gauge psychiatric distress, the Amharic translation and Ethiopian validation of the Kessler 6 scale (K-6) was employed. The analysis was done using binary logistic regression and an odds ratio with the corresponding 95% confidence interval was estimated to measure the strength of the association. P value