A study on profile of patients using inhalants attending in a tertiary care center of East India

Authors

  • Debshankar Mukhopadhyay Senior Resident, Department of Psychiatry, Calcutta National Medical College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6692-6178
  • Abhijit Chakraborty Psychiatrist, Howrah District Hospital, Howrah, West Bengal, India
  • Srijit Ghosh Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatry, Calcutta National Medical College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3402-4823

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v13i6.41267

Keywords:

Abuse, Adolescents, Dependence, Inhalants

Abstract

Background: There is a slow but steady increase in inhalant use in India among adolescent age group. There is a very few studies regarding inhalant use disorder in India. No study has been reported from West Bengal.

Aims and Objectives: In our study, we aimed to study the sociodemographic and clinical profile of patients using inhalants.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional clinic-based study conducted in a tertiary care center medical college hospital of West Bengal. All patients attending in the outpatient department with a history of inhalant use were taken in this study irrespective of diagnosis and purpose of visit. Duration of the study was 18 months. Sociodemographic and clinical profiles were obtained using a
semi-structured pro forma.

Results: We studied 26 patients. All were unmarried male from urban background, middle to lower socioeconomic status. Most of them were from nuclear family. Mean age was 15.2 years. Most of them were studying (69.2%). Inhalant was the preferred substance for all of them. Tobacco was the most common substance used along with inhalants. The most common inhalants substance was glue (Dendrite) 84.6%. Sniffing (80.8%) was the most common form of inhalation. For all of the patients, inhalation was out of curiosity. Only 23.1% had a positive family history of substance dependence. The most common comorbidity found was conduct disorder (30.8%). Motivation for quitting was poor for most of the patients.

Conclusion: Inhalant use disorder is an important but still unexplored research area in West Bengal. Although not common, inhalant use disorder is not rare in clinical setting.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Abstract
148
PDF
182

Downloads

Published

2022-06-01

How to Cite

Debshankar Mukhopadhyay, Abhijit Chakraborty, & Srijit Ghosh. (2022). A study on profile of patients using inhalants attending in a tertiary care center of East India. Asian Journal of Medical Sciences, 13(6), 168–171. https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v13i6.41267

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 6 (2022)

Section

Original Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The journal holds copyright and publishes the work under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license that permits use, distribution and reprduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. The journal should be recognised as the original publisher of this work.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).