Psychiatric disorders among the elderly on non-psychiatric wards in an African setting

Abstract

There is a high rate of psychiatric morbidity among the elderly in Uganda. Particular attention should be given to the psychological health of elderly people admitted to general hospitals.

Mental Distress among Patients Admitted in Gondar University Hospital: A Cross Sectional Institution Based Study

“…This may be the issue of adverse life events of losing someone they like most, including both economic and social losses that follows. That is consistent with studies conducted in Austria, South Africa and Uganda [20,25,30,34]. Patients who were educated to primary school are fifty percent times less vulnerable to mental distress than those who cannot read and write.…”

“…It was similar to other studies conducted in Uganda that women had a higher rate of psychiatric illness than men; in Nigeria and Denmark, there was a higher prevalence of cases that were found among females. This increased prevalence of mental distress may be due to increased responsibilities such as child care, care of other family members, other hormonal or biological factors, the traditional role of women in societies exposes females to greater stresses as well as making them less able to change their stressful environment, the high rate of domestic and sexual violence to which women are exposed [27,31,33,34].…”

Psychological distress among adults admitted to medical and surgical wards of a Regional Referral Hospital, Uganda

“…. The poor recognition of psychiatric distress and psychiatric disorders among the physically ill, is similar to what was found by Nakasujja 13 at Mulago hospital where only 6% of the psychiatric disorders among elderly inpatients had been identified by the attending doctors. It is also similar to what was found by Fink and colleagues 18 in Denmark.…”

“…medications) given for the physical illnesses may exacerbate pre-existing psychological problems or precipitate them for the first time. 9,10,11,12 The study by Nakasujja in 2002 in Uganda, 13 reported a 48% prevalence of psychiatric disorders among the elderly in-patients on the non-psychiatric wards of the national referral general hospital (Mulago). Surprisingly, only 6% of them had been identified by the attending doctors.…”

Comparison of Mini-Mental State Examination (Mmse) and Bangla Mini-Mental State Examination (Mmse-B) Among Healthy Elderly in Bangladesh

“…However, the exact evaluation of cognitive impairment is often difficult, especially among the elderly. Among the battery of screening tools available, mini mental state examination (MMSE) had been most widely used [2][3][4] . It has been modified and translated into many languages, including Chinese and Finnish 5 , Korean 6 , Japanese 7 , Spanish 8 , Hindi 9 etc.…”