Association between Depression, Anxiety and Low Back Pain among Housewives

Background: Housewives do household duties that are traditionally an unpaid labour, which can cause musculoskeletal disorders like low back pain in housewives. Housewives are under chronic stress when dealing with multiple tasks like cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes in their daily routine. Objective: To find the association between depression, anxiety and low back pain in housewives. Methodology: It was a cross-sectional study, conducted at Muhammad Hospital and the Sharif City Polyclinic over six months. This study used a non-probability convenience sampling technique, with a sample size of 140 housewives aged 20 to 45 years, having pain for more than six months and non-pregnant at the time of study, were included. Mental retardation, working and neurological disorder housewives were excluded. Data was collected through the visual analogue scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 questionnaire.  Process of gathering data was continuously watched, and all forms were reviewed for accuracy and completeness. Forms that were incomplete or poorly filled out were given back to the participants for revision. Data analysis was done by using SPSS-25. Chi-square correlation test was used to study the relationship between depression, anxiety and low back pain. Results: Present study concluded that among 140 housewives of LBP 59 housewives have severe anxiety lied in score of Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 (15-21), 46 have moderate anxiety lied in score (10-14), 32 having mild anxiety lied in score (5-9), only 3 participants have minimal anxiety lied in score (0- 4). Among 140 housewives with low back pain, 41 (29.3%) showed moderate to severe depression, 34(24.3%) showed mild depression, 33 participants showed severe depression, while only 4 participants showed minimal depression. Chi-square testing showed a positive relationship between anxiety, depression and low back pain among housewives with a p-value of 0.00. Conclusion: There is a substantial positive association between the severity of low back pain, depression and anxiety among housewives. For housewives with low back pain, it is necessary to screen the psychological symptoms and give appropriate treatment to prevent further disability. Additionally, other factors like age, body mass index and family structure were also associated factors for low back pain.