Date of Award

Summer 7-23-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Public Health

First Advisor

Dr. Emily Graybill

Second Advisor

Dr. Ike Okosun

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Mental health disorders are a major public health concern, whether it is in developed countries or developing countries. The importance of the mental health disorders is more pronounced when they concern adolescents. Suicide, one of the consequences of mental health disorders, which is among the leading cause of death of adolescents in the world, is the second leading cause of death in the United States (US). In the Western world, many data have been published concerning the phenomenon and actions are being taken to prevent those disorders. Unfortunately, in the developing world, especially in Togo, which is the focus of the current study, data on adolescent mental health disorders are scarce. Knowing the frequency and the nature of mental health disorders within a community is the first step to guiding research, policy, and program implementation.

AIM: Provide data on the distribution of mental health disorders among adolescents of Togo

METHODS: We used a dataset established through the collection of information in the medical records of patients who have consulted in the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the teaching hospital of Lome-Campus in Togo. The review covered medical records from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2013 and included information on 2,190 individuals. Among those individuals, we selected 242 patients who met the inclusion criteria of this study. To be included, a patient must have consulted during the period covered by the study at the department, and the person had to be between 10 to 19-years-old and have a clear diagnosis of a mental health disorder. The variables examined in this study were socio-demographic characteristics and mental health diagnoses according to the definition of ICD-10. We reported the descriptive statistics in form of means with 95% confidence interval, frequencies with Pearson Chi-square or Fisher exact test when needed, with a p-value of 0.05 for significance level. SAS was the statistical software used to compute the statistics.

RESULTS: The mean age of adolescents who developed a mental health disorder was 17.19-years-old with 95% CI of [16.99,17.39]. Females were more concerned by mental health disorders than males (61.16% vs 38.84% of the sample). Most of the adolescents had a low socio-economic status. The mental health disorders were distributed as follow: 35.95% were “Acute and Transient Psychotic Disorders (F23), while 21.90% were “Somatoform Disorders- Other Neurotic Disorders (F45-F48)”, 8.26% were “Depressive Episode- Recurrent Depressive Disorders (F32-F33)”, 6.61% were “Reaction to Severe Stress, and Adjustment Disorders (F43)”, 6.20% were “Dissociative [conversion] Disorders (F44)”, and 04.55% were “Mental and Behavioral Disorders due to Use of Cannabinoids (F12)”.

DISCUSSION: Most of our results were consistent with studies published in the literature.

CONCLUSION: More studies need to be done on a population basis to confirm the trend of mental health disorders in the country of Togo.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/12555986

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