The link between weather elements and mental disorders is often described in high-income countries, with hardly any data from low-and middle-income countries where the resources to cope with the negative mental health impacts of climate change are extremely constrained.  In this paper, we examined the association between weather elements and the incident presentation with a mental disorder at Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital. We used secondary data from two datasets: i) a mental health data set collated from all patients presenting at Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital in 2019; and ii)   a climatic dataset for the geographic location of Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital for the same year (2019). The mental health data set included socio-demographic variables and mental disorder diagnoses, while the climatic data set included data on, atmospheric pressure (hPa), rainfall (mm), sunshine (hours/month), humidity (%), temperature (°C) and wind speed (m/s).  We performed descriptive statistical analyses to summarize the frequency of mental disorder diagnoses and the monthly averages of weather variables. We then undertook correlation and multiple logistic regression analyses to investigate the associations between specific weather elements and the incident presentation of different mental disorders. In the mental health data, we had 2,827 participants, males were 56.1%(n=1,584), and the median age was 29 years (IQR 23-38).  Psychotic disorders were the most common diagnosis at 43.8% (n=1,239). Overall, various weather elements correlated at different strengths with incident presentation of various mental disorders, particularly humidity and rainfall. On controlling for age and sex in the multiple regression models, the strongest associations were between heat elements and incident presentation for psychotic disorders [AOR1.12, 95%CI (1.04; 1.27) p<0.001]. No associations were demonstrated between weather elements and incident presentation for neurocognitive and neurodevelopmental disorders. These preliminary findings point to a possible relationship between incident presentation of mental disorders to a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Uganda and various weather elements.  There is need for longitudinal studies to confirm these associations and to explore underlying social and biological mechanisms.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This work was supported by Grant Number D43TW010132, funded by the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health (OD), in collaboration with the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Fogarty International Center (FIC), and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the School of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee (SOMREC) of Makerere University and Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) (#REC REF 2017-086). We also received institutional approval from the hospital to conduct the study. Because this was a retrospective chart review of file records, we requested a waiver for participant consent.

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