Factors associated with antenatal mental disorder in West Africa: A cross-sectional survey

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Research Article

Bola Ola¹  Adetokunbo Tayo²  Jim Crabb³  Selena H Gleadow Ware⁴  Arup Dhar⁴  Rajeev Krishnadas⁵ 

[1] Department of Behavioural Medicine, LASUCOM Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria;Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology LASUCOM Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria;Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Stirling Road, Larbert, UK;Riverside Resource Centre Community Mental Health Team, 8 Sandy Rd, Glasgow, UK;Sackler Institute of Psychobiological Research, Section of Psychological Medicine, Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, UK;

关键词: Mental Illness;    Domestic Violence;    Physical Violence;    Common Mental Disorder;    Maternal Mental Health;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2393-11-90

 received in 2011-07-02, accepted in 2011-11-04,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMaternal mental illness is likely to have a profound impact in less developed parts of the world. A mother experiencing mental illness in a low income setting is at risk of providing sub-optimal care for her offspring which can have grave consequences in an environment where poverty, overcrowding, poor sanitation, malnutrition, tropical diseases and a lack of appropriate medical services may be pronounced. Given the profound consequences of antenatal and postnatal mental illness on maternal mental health, foetal wellbeing and childhood growth and development the factors associated with mental illness in a Sub-Saharan setting merit clarification and investigation.MethodsA prospective survey design was conducted in Lagos. Self reporting questionnaire 20 items - SRQ20 - assessed the presence of mental illness. The WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence Questions assessed women's exposure to violence. Numerous variables potentially associated with mental illness including maternal socio-economic factors, maternal characteristics, obstetric variables and the characteristics of previous children were recorded. Direct logistic regression was performed to assess the impact of a number of variables on the likelihood of presence of mental disorder in the population.Results189 women were surveyed. 7% met the criteria for experiencing a common mental disorder according to their score on the SRQ-20. Of variables examined only the number of female children and the presence of inter personal violence predicted being a case of mental illness (OR = 3.400; 95%CI = 1.374 - 8.414 and OR = 5.676; 95%CI = 1.251 - 25.757 respectively).ConclusionsRates of mental disorder found in our study were lower than those previously observed internationally and in Africa, perhaps reflecting stigma about disclosing symptoms. The predictive nature of violence on mental disorder is in keeping with international evidence. Our study demonstrated that exposure to inter personal violence within the last 12 months and increasing numbers of female children predict the presence of mental illness in a sample of pregnant Nigerian women. Training and education for primary health care and obstetric health workers should highlight these areas.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ola et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.