Knowledge, Awareness, Prevalence and Risk Factors of Self-Medication among Young Adult Population

Factors influencing frequency of self-medication in the previous studies are age, educational level, family attitudes, advertising of drug manufacturers, legislation regulating dispensing and sale of drugs, previous experiences with the symptoms or disease, significance attributed to the disease, home-kept prescription drugs and economic situation of respondents. Depression and anxiety may also be connected with self-medication. The aim of this research was to investigate prevalence and risk factors for self-medication among the population of medical students. A descriptive survey has been done among young adults in Chennai for 100 students ranging from first year to internship. The average cranial index for male is 71.32 and for female is 72.46, the average nasal index for male is 52.19 and for female is 51.57, the average Gnathic index for male is 93.61 and for female is 93.01. It is understood that both fever relieving medication and pain killers were up the main symptoms leading to self-medication. It is also understood that doctors were the most influential under source of information by 42% and advertisements, books and friends had the same value of (8%) and it is understood that young adults preferred idiopathic treatment compared, homeopathic treatment by a value of 54%.