Even today TB is considered to be a social stigma in our society. It is also a psychological trauma for a person to be diagnosed as a case of TB. Moreover many patients have guilt feeling, helplessness, loss of self-esteem, apathy and jealousy towards others due to interaction of complex psychosocial factors. During hospitalization, he may react emotionally to the illness in a way, which may be fatal during the first episode of illness or may have a modifying effect on his life style and habits.

In 1997, a study was conducted at the Rajan Babu TB hospital to find out the emotional problems encountered by the hospitalized patients. The hospital having indoor capacity of 1155 beds is located at kingsway camp in New Delhi. A total of 550 patients were included in the study by using systematic random sampling of all the admitted patients. Out of them, 300 (60%) were in the age group 20-40 years comprising of 366 (73.2%) males, 306 (61.2%) illiterates and only 16 (3.2%) were educated up to higher secondary. Socio-economic profile was that 60.4% of the patients came from upper lower middle class, 12.8% from lower middle class and 6.4% from upper middle class. No patients belonged to the upper class. A structured and pre-coded interview schedule was used for data collection. The data was analyzed by using SPSS software package.

Results revealed that 59.6% patients had loss of self-esteem, which is borderline of depression followed by 16.3% apathy towards the world and 15.9% had the desire to commit suicide. The loss of self-esteem was found to be more prevalent among those in the age group 30-50 years (60.53%), while the desire to commit suicide was more common in older age groups. With regard to emotional reactions of self-avoidance of social gathering, 310 (63.5%) patients said that they avoid going to the parties themselves. This trend was more common among those in the age group 20-40 years (61.9%). Feeling of loneliness and of being ignored by the family members was experienced by 12.5% of respondents. In the age group ? 40 years, it was noticed that patient’s daily routine was affected to a great extent due to TB.

The study findings suggest a definite need to address these psychiatric issues for a proper integration of the TB patients in the main stream of social milieu.

TB like any other chronic infection needs prolonged treatment. It also carries a social stigma and results in adverse psychological reactions. The study details the pattern of psychiatric morbidity among patients sufferings from TB. The study group includes 50 out-patients of pulmonary TB attending Guru Teg Bahadur TB hospital in Delhi with the mean age of 28.3 years (range 11-55 years). Their socio-demongraphic and clinical details were noted on a semi-structured proforma. These patients were then interviewed in detail and specialist’s opinion and relevant investigations were obtained whenever required. Diagnosis of psychiatric disorder was made according to ICD 10 (International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition). The male and female sex ratio was 3:1.

Thirty nine patients (78%) had associated psychiatric disorders; the commonest being mixed anxiety and depressive disorders. The remaining 22% did not have any psychiatric disorders.

The TB patients showed a higher degree of psychiatric disorder like denial, hopelessness about life, fear of being neglected by the spouse, family and society. This could be because of the nature of illness, prolonged treatment, social stigma, misconception about illness, reactions of family members and economical stress.

More studies are warranted with a larger sample size to find out the causation and pattern of psycho-social disturbance among patients sufferings from TB and other chronic physical illness.