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The study demonstrated that patients who suffer from depression are higher utilizers of health care resources compared with the non-depressed. Therefore, it is recommended that general practitioners and other health workers need to be better equipped to deal with the diagnosis and management of depression.

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The patterns of alcohol consumption among females  is of enormous public health concerns, as harmful consumption poses danger to their health, welfare, children and to the civil society. The study objectives were to determine the current prevalence of alcohol use, the related socio-demographic factors and the patterns of alcohol consumption. It was a descriptive cross-sectional study in Jos North Local Government Area, carried out from March to July, 2017 after ethical clearance was obtained. A multistage sampling technique was employed to select the participants who were age 18 years and above. A total of 272 females with an age range of 18 to 60 years responded. The mean age was 28.8±8.6 years. Majority 112(41.2%) were in the age group of 25-34 years. Most of them were never married 168 (61.8%), protestants 151(55.4%) and had secondary education 97(35.7%). About half of them were employed (148(54.4%) with 167(61.4%) of them earned an average monthly income of 20,000 naira or less. One hundred and fifty nine (58.5%) use alcohol in the family. The estimated prevalence of life time use, current use and abstention were 79.4%, 41.2% and 20.6% respectively. Of the current users 35(31.1%) were low risk while hazardous, harmful and dependent users were 30(26.8%), 21(18.8%) and 26(23.2%) respectively. The sociodemographic variables associated with current alcohol use were history of family use (χ2 = 3.088, df = 1, p = 0.01) and educational status (χ2 = 8.797, df = 3, p = 0.03). These findings call for immediate advocacy and sensitization of awareness concerning prevention, treatment and rehabilitation to stem the tide of deleterious patterns of alcohol consumption among females in the community.

Long duration of hospitalisation has been associated with negative consequences of isolating the patients from their social network, initiating maladaptive patterns in the patients and worsening the burden of care on the relatives. In this particular study, we were interested in determining factors that correlate with length of stay on admission among in-patients receiving psychiatric services in North-Central Nigeria. The prospective study was part of a larger in-patients study conducted on 112 consenting patients admitted in the psychiatric wards of Benue State University Teaching Hospital Makurdi, Federal Medical Centre Makurdi and Jos University Teaching Hospital Jos during the study period. Patients who stayed on hospital admission for more than twenty-eight (28) days were classified as ‘long stay’, conversely, those who were discharged from admission after spending 28 days or less were referred to as ‘short stay’ patients. A total of 112 subjects were recruited for the study, 67(59.8%) were female while 45(40.2%) were male, the mean age was 36.98±11.09 years and 54(48.2%) subjects were still married at the time of the study. Forty-two representing 37.5% of the respondents stayed on admission for more than 28 days. The mean duration of stay was 28.8±24.5 days. Long duration of stay was found to be significantly associated with the quality of intimate partner relationship (p=0.001), years of completed education (p=0.021), age group (p=0.001), nature of psychiatric diagnosis (p=0.014), pharmacotherapy (p=0.001), comorbid physical condition (p=0.001), previous admission (p=0.001), defaulted treatment (p=0.001), frequency of previous episodes (p=0.001) and the number of years a patient has had the mental disorder (p=0.001). We concluded that, assessing duration of stay on admission among in-patients treatment for psychiatric disorders is very necessary.