Prevalence of Audiovisual, Mental, and Locomotor Disabilities among the Followers of Different Religions in India

Abstract

Introduction: Physical and mental disabilities are common among the elderly which affects their quality of life. This study aims to investigate the associations of disabilities with religion and gender in cohorts of India. Methods: We used the 2019-2021 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of India to investigate the prevalence of age-associated auditory, visual, mental, and locomotor disabilities among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians in the context of age, gender, and standard socioeconomic and demographic variables in India (age ≥60 years, n = 305,754). Results: We found a disability discordance with a slightly higher prevalence of visual and hearing disabilities among Christian men (visual = 424/100000; hearing = 596/100,000) than Christian women (visual = 226/100,000; hearing = 352/100,000) and followers of other religions. Conversely, mental and locomotor disabilities were not influenced by religion. We also found that locomotor disabilities were more common (623/100,000), and mental disabilities (103/100,000) were least common irrespective of religion. Conclusion: We conclude that there were no differences in the prevalence of the four disabilities between Hindus and Muslims, however, Christians more often suffer from different disability domains than Hindus and Muslims (except for mental difficulty). This calls for a more detailed exploration of reasons for higher preponderance in this religious group. Men were more likely to have visual, hearing, or locomotor disabilities than women among different religious communities. These findings may help design gender-specific public policies for the disabled population across India and may also help in investigating the cause of this gender gap.