@article{Choktanasiri_Kalayasiri_2013, title={Mental Health and Associated Factors of Astrological Clients Seeking for the Service}, volume={54}, url={https://he01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/JPAT/article/view/7652}, abstractNote={Abstract<br />Objectives: To study the level of mental health status and related factors of astrological clients seeking for the service from fortune-tellers.<br />Methods: Data on current mental health status, last-year stressful life events and social supports were obtained from four-hundred clients at the Astrological Association of Thailand (ATT), Bangkok using the Thai Mental Health Indicator (TMHI-15), the Stressful life Event Questionnaire and the Social Support Questionnaire,<br />respectively. Demographic data and astrology-related or mental-health-related activities were also collected. Astrological clients with poor, normal and excellent mental health were compared by chi-square statistics. Variables that were found significantly (i.e., p < 0.1) were subjected to analysis by multiple logistic regression.<br />Results: Of 400 clients at the astrology service, the majority were female (N = 301, 75.2%) and had graduated at bachelorûs degree or above (N = 265, 66.2%). The average age of the clients was 34 years (mean + SD = 34.0 + 10.2 years). Initial analyses showed that the clients with poor mental health (N = 121;30.2%) had a lower income (p = 0.03), a lower social support (p < 0.0001) and a higher number of last-year stressful life events (p < 0.0001) than those with normal (N = 190; 47.5%) or excellent (N = 89; 22.2%) mental health. Poor mental health clients were more likely to gamble more often (p = 0.003) and to use cannabis (p = 0.04) than the other groups. They also had a stronger desire to know the future from the astrology services (p = 0.02) and expected better outcomes from the services (p = 0.01) than those with better mental health.<br />With respect to mental health services, clients with poor mental health had a higher history of receiving services from mental health professionals (p = 0.03) and were more likely to have an impression of people seeing psychiatric professionals as being psychotic or neurotic (p = 0.02), but having normal reaction to stress.<br />Subsequent analysis by multiple logistic regression showed that the factors associated with poor mental health were highly stressful life events in the last year, high number of gambling and bad attitude toward people under psychiatric treatment. No other demographic data, cannabis use and history of receiving mental health<br />services were found statistically significant in the regression model (p > 0.05).<br />Conclusions: As expected, females were more interested in astrological services than males. One-third of clients that were seeking for astrological services had poor mental health. Highly stressful life events, high involving in gambling activities and bad attitude toward psychiatric treatment associated with the trait.}, number={2}, journal={Journal of the Psychiatric Association of Thailand}, author={Choktanasiri, Thanit and Kalayasiri, Rasmon}, year={2013}, month={Apr.}, pages={169–184} }