Profile of early onset psychosis at a Nigerian tertiary psychiatric facility

Clinical Profile of Early Onset Psychosis in a Nigerian Sample

“…However, a study conducted in the U.S by Balliger et al [23] found schizophrenia to be the most common diagnosis [26]. However, our results converge with findings from previous studies conducted in similar settings to ours; such as a retrospective study of patients with early onset psychosis presenting to a psychiatric hospital in Abeokuta, south-West Nigeria Okewole et al [27] reported that schizophrenia was the commonest diagnosis. Similarly, schizophrenia predominated a clinical sample of adolescent-onset psychoses study in South Africa [28].…”

“…The prevalence rate is remarkably higher in Europe, North America and Australia where one-sixth to half of patients with early onset psychosis were estimated to have substance use disorders [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. In Nigeria, whereas substance use has been shown to be prevalent among adolescents in the general population [50][51], substance use disorders tend to be under-represented in child and adolescent psychiatric clinic samples [27,52]. The low rates of substance use disorder in our study sample may be attributed to a number of factors including under-detection due to non-disclosure, the younger age of the sample and nonavailability of in-patient substance use treatment program within the study location.…”