COMMON ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS SEEN IN FAMILY MEDICINE CLINICS IN GHANA AND NIGERIA

Abstract

Background Mental health disorders among adolescents is on the rise globally. For fear of stigmatization, patients seldom present to mental health physicians. They are mostly picked during consultations with Family Physicians. This study seeks to evaluate the common mental health disorders seen by family Physicians in Family Medicine Clinics in Nigeria and Ghana. Methodology A descriptive cross-sectional study involving 302 Physicians practicing in Family Medicine Clinics in Nigeria and Ghana who were randomly selected for the study. Data were collected using self-administered semi-structured questionnaire, and were entered into excel spreadsheet before analysing with IBM-SPSS version 22. Descriptive statistics using frequencies and percentages was used to describe variables. Ethical approval was obtained prior to commencement of the study. Results Of the 302 Physicians recruited for the study, only 233 completed the study, in which 168 (72.1%) practiced in Nigeria and 65 (27.9%) in Ghana. They were mostly in urban communities (77.3%) and tertiary health facilities (65.2%). Over 90% of Family Medicine practitioners attended to adolescents with mental health issues with over 70% of them seeing at least 2 adolescents with mental health issues every year. The burden of mental health disorder was 16% and the common mental health disorders seen were depression (59.2%), Bipolar Affective Disorder (55.8%), Epilepsy (51.9%) and Substance Abuse Disorder (44.2%). Conclusion Family Physicians in Nigeria and Ghana attend to a good number of adolescents with mental health disorders in their Family Medicine clinics. There is the need for Family Physicians to have specialized training and retraining to be able to recognize and treat adolescent mental health disorders. This will help reduce stigmatization and improve the management of the disease thus reducing the burden.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Author Declarations

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Not Applicable

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee of Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Irrua, Nigeria (ISTH/HREC/20221403/275).

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

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I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

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Data Availability

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

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