Prevalence and Pattern of Psychosocial Disorders among Caregivers of HIV-infected Children in Enugu, South-Eastern Nigeria.

Background: Nigeria has the highest burden of paediatric HIV in the world. HIV infection may result in significant life stressors, on both the infected children and their caregivers.

Methods: This included a hospital-based cross-sectional and comparative study. Subjects and controls who met the inclusion criteria were enrolled consecutively. Their socio-demographic variables were obtained and GHQ-28 was used to assess their psychosocial status.

Results: A total of 154 caregivers of HIV-infected children (subjects) and 154 caregivers of HIV-negative children (controls) were enrolled into this study. In total, 42 (27.3%) and 112 (72.7%) of the subjects were males and females, respectively, compared with 37 (24.0%) and 117 (76.0%) of the controls, respectively. The prevalence of psychosocial disorders among the subjects and controls was 39 and 2.6%, respectively (p < 0.001; odds ratio: 23.936). The patterns of psychosocial disorders among the caregivers of HIV-infected children were somatic symptoms (85%), anxiety/insomnia (80%), social dysfunction (63.3%) and severe depression (48.3%).

Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of psychosocial disorders among caregivers of HIV-infected children.