Background: In 2018, the Nigerian Communication Commission affirmed that more than 100 million Nigerians made use of the Internet. A good percentage of internet usage is maladaptive. A valid, reliable, and socio-culturally sensitive assessment instrument is essential to study internet usage patterns in Nigeria. Young’s Internet Addiction test (IAT) has been validated in many countries, but not in Nigeria. Objectives: This study aimed to validate IAT to determine psychometric properties acceptable in a Nigerian population. Materials and Methods: A total of 184 Nigerian University undergraduates (77 males and 107 females), mean age = 20.5, were purposively drawn, and they responded to IAT, the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV), and the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS). Results: The Cronbach’s α of the six IAT factors ranged from 0.25 (anticipation) to 0.69 (salience). The observed overall Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.79 was obtained for IAT. The corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.73 to 0.84. The concurrent validity score was observed to be r = 0.54 between IAT and SAS-SV and r = 0.58 between IAT and BFAS. A significant positive correlation was equally observed between the IAT and BFAS factors, ranging from conflict (r = 0.322, P = 0.000) to relapse (r = 0.488, P = 0.000). The new norm determined for IAT in the Nigerian population was ≥ 38.5 for males and ≥ 40.8 for females. Conclusions: IAT is gender-sensitive and has acceptable psychometric properties for the Nigerian population.

This study was carried out to observe the link between parental factors and Conduct Disorder (CD) among Nigerian school adolescents. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted for the study where multi-stage sampling techniques led to selecting 1006 participants (mean age = 15.4 years) from six secondary schools in Ibadan, Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria. Participants responded to Socioeconomic Status (SES) scale, the Parenting Styles Scale (PSS) and Frequency of Delinquent Behaviour Scaling Instrument (FDBSI). A high prevalence of CD was observed. We also observed that parenting styles significantly influenced conduct disorders. Responsive parenting is not a significant predictor of CD, while control parenting significantly predicted CD. Parental occupation significantly influenced CD, with formal occupation types having higher mean scores for both fathers and mothers. Finally, there was a significant influence of socioeconomic status on conduct disorder among the participants. Findings concluded that there is a high prevalence of conduct disorder. Authoritarian and uninvolved parents with formal occupation and families with higher socioeconomic status were conduct disorder determinants among adolescents.

Background: Health care workers (HCWs) are the frontline of coping COVID-19 pandemic, which indicates the importance of improving their mental wellness to better cope with the situation. Objectives: The current study aimed to firstly assess the severity of anxiety and depression and perceived vulnerability to diseases, and secondly to investigate their association with the fear of COVID-19 among Nigerian HCWs. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, a purposefully selected sample of 413 HCWs from two tertiary healthcare institutions in Benin City, Edo State, South-South Nigeria, responded to the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Scale. Data was collected between October 2020 and February 2021. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize socio-demographic variables, while inferential statistics (t-test for independent samples, one-way ANOVA, and linear regression) were used to test hypotheses. Results: A high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and perceived vulnerability to diseases (PVD) was observed. Perceived infectability (β = 0.244, P = 0.000), germ aversion (β = 0.166, P = 0.000), and composite PVD (β = 0.96, P = 0.000) were identified as independent and significant predictors of fear of COVID-19, accounting for 7.5; 3.3, and 9.9% variance in the severities of Fear of COVID-19, respectively. Anxiety and depression showed a significant joint prediction of Fear of COVID-19 severity, accounting for a 4.0% variance in the severity. Fear of COVID-19 was not found to be influenced by sex or job type differences among the HCWs. Conclusions: This study demonstrated a high incidence of anxiety, depression, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 among Nigerian HCWs. These reported symptoms of psychopathology are also strong independent and joint predictors of fear of COVID-19.

Background: There is a high prevalence of suicidal behavior among Nigerian youths. However, the connections between suicidal behavior and precipitating factors, such as gambling disorder and emotional dysregulation (ED) in this population, are not well researched. Objectives: The present study examined the associations between gambling disorder, ED, and suicidal behavior in Nigerian university undergraduate students. Methods: This study was carried out during October 2020 - April 2021 on 1338 undergraduates with a mean ± SD age of 19.84 ± 3.22 years selected using random and purposive sampling for the universities and participants respectively. Participants responded to the Attitudes Towards Gambling Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, and Redeemer's University Suicidality Scale. Descriptive statistics (simple percentages) and inferential statistics (Pearson’s correlation and regression analysis) were used for data analysis. Results: The Pearson's correlation revealed that suicidal behaviour had significant positive correlations with the nonacceptance of emotional responses or distress (r = 0.22, P = 0), difficulties engaging in goal-directed behaviours (r = 0.21, P = 0), difficulties in impulse control (r = 0.27, P = 0), the lack of emotional awareness (r = 0.14, P = 0), limited access to emotional regulation strategies (r = 0.33, P = 0), the lack of emotional clarity (r = 0.32, P = 0), and difficulties in emotional regulation (r = 0.4, P = 0). Problematic gambling (PG) independently predicted suicidal behavior, while PG and ED dimensions jointly predicted suicidal behavior. The ED dimensions contributed 15% incrementally to the prediction of suicidal behavior and beyond the 2% variance accounted for PG in undergraduates. Conclusions: Our results showed positive links between PG, ED, and suicidal behavior among Nigerian undergraduates. It suggests that the combination of PG and ED increases the severity of suicidal behavior among students.

Background: Conduct Disorder (CD) is a repetitive disruptive behaviour that violates the rights of others, manifests in rules violation, aggression, hostility, and deceitfulness and has assumed prominence in its association with juvenile offending and criminality in adulthood. Despite this knowledge, little research attention is given to ascertaining effective psychobehavioural interventions to manage this problem, especially amongst Nigerian adolescents.Aim: This study examined the efficacy of two psychobehavioural strategies to manage CD amongst in-school adolescents in Ibadan, Nigeria.Setting: Ibadan, Southwestern Nigeria.Method: A randomised controlled trial (RCT) of adolescents with CD was performed. Sixteen participants (aged 12–17 years) who reported high CD from an assessment of 1006 in-school adolescents of selected secondary schools in Ibadan were randomly grouped to receive either cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), social skills training (SST) or combined CBT and SST. The Frequency of Delinquent Behaviour Scaling Instrument (FDBSI) was used for assessments.Results: Significant reduction in CD was observed among participants exposed to CBT (t[6] = 8.510), p  0.05) at 8 weeks, SST (t[6] = 12.728), p  0.05) at 8 weeks, and combined CBT and SST (t[8] = 12.728, p  0.05) at the 6 week mark of interventions respectively.Conclusion: From the study, CBT and SST are effective in managing CD. However, the combined psychobehavioural intervention of CBT and SST was more effective in managing CD, based on a faster therapeutic effect than the independent psychobehavioural intervention of CBT and SST.