ABSTRACT… To determine the social and psychological effects of infertility along with the effect of education and spouse support on bearing of social pressures and hopefulness about future. Study Design: Cross sectional descriptive study. Setting: Infertility clinics of Public sector and private sector hospitals. Period: Three months from January to March 2017. Material & Methods: A total of 90 couples were selected using consecutive sampling technique. Questionnaire included the education and occupation of husband and wife, monthly income, years of marriage, cause of infertility, expenditure on treatment, first response to infertility, reaction of spouse and in-laws, effect of infertility on social life, and associated psychological problems. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Results: In 13% of cases the problem was in husband, 41% in wife, and in rest of cases it was un-explained. In 57.8% couples, situation was stressful for both, in 35.5% couples it was more for wives. The response towards infertility was sadness 69%, guilt 12% followed by loneliness 10%. Majority (82%) of spouse were supportive. 32% couples experienced too much pressure.60% couples were hopeful, 22% depressed and 18% neutral about future. Spouse support increases from 67% in illiterate to 95% in highly educated. Social pressures were less where there was strong spouse support. Conclusion: Infertility not only increases social pressures and affect the social life of couple but can pose danger to psychological health as well. These adverse effects are lessened in couples with better education and strong spouse support.

Background: Health literacy refers to the ability to access, understand and use health related information to promote good health. It is required to achieve good health of an individual. Good health literacy has been shown to improve health outcomes of a person and is now the focus of many researches internationally. The objective of the study was to assess health literacy levels and its determinants in patients visiting tertiary care hospital in Rawalpindi Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted in three public sector tertiary care hospitals in duration of four months. 450 adults of either gender with age > 18 years capable of providing informed consent and able to communicate in any of the local languages were selected from outpatient and emergency departments. The data entry and statistical analysis were done using SPSS version 23. Results: 26.2% of people had poor health literacy, 56.4% had satisfactory health literacy whereas only 17.3% had good health literacy. Health literacy was poorest in domain of disease prevention (lowest mean score of 2.3+.86). Mean health literacy was significantly positively associated with higher income, and higher frequency of watching health-related television programs. Conclusion: Health literacy levels were found to be low in our study population. Gaps in health literacy should be addressed by more research and interventions. The health educators (health care professionals) can play a major role in helping to enhance the health literacy and act as an advocate for health education.

Background: Nomophobia is defined as “The discomfort or anxiety felt when out of the mobile phone (MP) or computer contact. It is the fear of becoming technologically incommunicable, distant from the mobile phone or not connected to the web”. The frequency of nomophobia has increased over the past years and this condition has many negative consequences. The objective of our study is to find the frequency of nomophobia among medical students of Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU).Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out at Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU) over the course of one year. The inclusion criteria were medical students of all five years of MBBS studying at RMU. Students who do not own or use a smart-phone were excluded from the study. Our sample size was 350 students, who were recruited by convenience sampling. For this study, The Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q)has been used which has 20 items. Each item is scored on a 7 point Likert scale. The total score ranges from 20 to 140. Results: The mean NMP-Q score of the male students was 82.96 (±21.06) and that of the female students was 78.52 (±23.69), with a p-value of 0.065, which is insignificant. Out of the total 350 students, the number of students with a mild level of nomophobia was 61(17.4%), with a moderate level of nomophobia was 216(61.7%), and with severe nomophobia was 73(20.9%).Conclusion: Measures are needed to be taken on both public and personal level to counter this issue of nomophobia, which is becoming highly prevalent in our society.