Prevalence And Socio-Demographic Factors Associated With Depression Among Patients With Tuberculosis Attending TB Clinic of Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital.

Abstract

Background:

Depression is a major cause of the global disease burden, affecting an estimated 350-400 million people worldwide. This makes it the largest contributor to Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) globally

 Methodology:  

It was a descriptive cross-sectional study with an analytic component in which 82 patients already diagnosed with TB were recruited for the study using stratified sampling techniques and convenient sampling techniques. PHQ-9 was used to assess for presence and severity of depression, a score above 9 was considered to be depressed. The socio-demographic questionnaire was used to obtain the socio-demographic characteristics. Data entry and analysis were done using SPSS 23^rd version, Chi-square test, and T-test was used to find associations of socio-demographic factors to depression.

Results:

The prevalence of depression was 54.9%, out of whom 22.2%, 66.7%, and 11.1% had mild, moderate, and severe depression respectively. Depression was more prevalent in patients from a nuclear family (34.1%), in the age group of 31 to 60 years (32.9%), treatment duration of 1 month (31.7%), among the females (29.3%), and patients who were unemployed 28%.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the prevalence of depression (54.9%) in TB patients is high, with most patients moderately depressed and this could be associated with multiple socio-demographic factors like being female, age of 30-60 years, unemployment, low education level, being in the intensive phase of TB treatment, HIV and TB co-morbidity.

Recommendations:

There is a need for the integration of mental health services into TB treatment to ensure routine screening, early diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders like depression to prevent their co-morbidity with TB, which often has negative treatment outcomes. There is a need to carry out more research on depression in patients with TB to widen knowledge about this problem.