Screening for Depression among Parents of Children with Congenital Heart Disease in a Nigerian Paediatric Cardiology Clinic

Abstract

Background: Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is one of the commonest congenital malformations in developing countries such as Nigeria. Despite being associated with a lot of morbidity and mortality, there is grossly inadequate effective treatment modality in the country. Consequently, a lot of burden of care is placed on the parents of children with this pathology; along with emotional complications in such parents. The dearth of literature on this necessitated this study. Methods: Parents of children with CHD attending the Paediatric Cardiology clinic of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Lagos were recruited into the study along with sex and age matched controls, which is parents with no children with such pathology nor any other chronic illness. Ethical approval and individual consent were obtained for the study. The subjects