Factors affecting mental well-being among prolonged hospitalized patients in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Introduction: Mental well-being is an essential component of health. Prolonged hospitalized patients are prone to have alterations in mental wellbeing. So, it is important to study the effects of prolonged hospitalization on the mental well-being of patients as it can affect their disease conditions as well.

Objective: To assess the direct and indirect effects of prolonged hospitalization on the mental well-being of patients and to identify how social and environmental factors are involved in this matter.

Method: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted in hospitalized patients admitted to the medical, surgical, and Orthopedic wards of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, using a self-administered questionnaire. Participants were selected using simple random sampling.. The categorical variables were described as frequency and percentage and an ANOVA test was used to compare the level of mental well-being with social and environmental variables. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05 at 95% confidence interval.

Results: 130 subjects admitted for more than 14-days participated in the research and they were from General medical wards (33%), orthopedic wards (60.7%), General surgical wards (6.2%). Among them, 87.7% were hospitalized 14-30 days and 12.3% for more than 30 days. There was no significant association between duration of hospital stay and mental well-being (p=0.072). Regarding the source of food, the majority of patients (n=78; 60%) who consumed hospital-cooked food had better mental well-being scores. The better mental well-being scores had a significant association with higher monthly income (p<0.05), better hospital environment (p<0.001), and alcohol abstentious (p<0.01). However, there was no significant association between mental well-being and distance from home to hospital (p=0.081). After categorizing according to mental well-being score, 14.6% obtained unsatisfactory mental well-being, 30.8% - Satisfactory mental well-being, and 54.6% - Very good mental well-being. The results did not show a significant relationship between mental well-being and prolonged hospitalization.

Conclusion: The analysis did not provide evidence of an association between the alterations in the mental well-being of the patients and the duration of their stay in the hospital. Further studies such as multi-centric studies may be needed to validate its results.