To Study the Prevalence of Alcohol and Tobacco Among Youth and to Check Association with the Consumption Pattern and Their Mental Health (Stress, Anxiety, Depression)

Background: Alcohol and tobacco are a key risk factor to non-communicable and mental health diseases. Harmful use of alcohol leads to 1.7 million deaths due to non-communicable disease. Also smoking a high-risk factor to poor mental health and higher disability score. In India there are 16 crore alcohol drinkers, and 5.7 crores are problem drinkers and 2.9 crores dependent users and for 1-woman consuming alcohol 17 men are there consuming alcohol. GATS report the prevalence of tobacco in India is 42.4% with 10% are using tobacco in smoke form. In Punjab 51.7% people drink alcohol and men contributes to 28.5% and 27% people are problem drinkers. Tobacco use disorder in Punjab as per mental health report is 5.50%. Studies have reported poor mental health score with alcohol consumption and alcohol is associated with suicidal ideations and suicide attempts. Method: The study is a cross-sectional quantitative study with participants studying in different universities in Punjab. Participants were selected through convenience purposive sampling. Online and face to face survey was done on 496 students from different background of study (Medical, Non-Medical, Humanities) using AUDIT, FNDT and DASS21 questionnaire to access their drinking, tobacco and Mental health status and analysis was done using STATA 15.1 software. Results: The prevalence of alcohol and tobacco consumption was 15.73% and 3.83% respectively. Alcohol harmful/hazardous use was reported in 17.95% individuals and 68.75% were of low dependency of nicotine. The stress and depression was significantly associated with alcohol drinking and nicotine consumption and those who have severe and extreme depression have higher odds (AOR 7.96(2.6, 24.16), 2.06 (0.4, 8.9)) of consuming alcohol and also significantly associated p value 0.007, and participants with extreme stress have higher odds AOR 4.0 (0.9.17.4) of consuming alcohol p value 0.34.