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

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackgroundMental 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.MethodologyA 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.ResultsOf 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%).ConclusionFamily 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.