Quality of life, anxiety and depression among non-fatal road traffic accidents victims in South India

Road Traffic Accidents (RTA), whether fatal or non-fatal can be the cause of substantial financial hardships and significant mental health issues to victims and their families. The purpose of this paper is an attempt to understand the ‘quality of life’, anxiety, and depression levels among the victims of RTA. A total of 407 RTA Non-fatal victims randomly selected and approached for data collection: using socio-demographic and accident information, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and WHO Quality of Life tools. The four domains of Quality of Life, education, and age are employed along with the Quantile Regression approach to examine how they affect the dependent variable of Depression score. Non-fatal victims were classified into ‘Severely Injured’ and ‘No Serious Injury’. Age, Education and expenditure on RTA treatment were compared, except Age and other two variables were statistically significant. The four domains of quality of life also significantly differ between these two groups. Anxiety is the most important variable which contributes almost in all the quantiles of depression followed by Psychological health, Social relationship, Environmental Health and Age of the RTA victims. With the consequence of ‘Severely Injured’, RTA victims are found to have worse QoL scores and more depression. Age, social relationships, and anxiety are all linked to depression. Following medical treatment, RTA sufferers must undergo psychosocial counseling to lessen their anxiety and enhance their quality of life.