Pattern and Prevalence of Psychiatric Comorbidity in Patients with Essential Hypertension in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Essential hypertension, a non communicable disease, is assuming an epidemic dimension, of the nature of a communicable condition. It, predominantly affects the physical, social and psychological well-being of the middle to elderly age group, with the former incidentally contributing over 50% of Nigeria workforce, hence interfering with the nation’s economic well- being . Although few of such studies have been done in this environment, hypertensionhas been variously cited to be commonly associated with psychiatric comorbidity. The aim of this study, therefore, was to determine the pattern and prevalence of psychiatric co-morbidity among subjects with essential hypertension attending the out patient clinic of the University of Port Harcourt Teacing Hospital (UPTH). In this cross-sectional study, following ethical approval from the appropriate committee of the hospital and informed consent from the participants, 360 subjects making up the study group were recruited based on the study’s inclusion exclusion criteria, after a Pilot Study (In addition, the hypertensives were screened for HIV infection and also investigated for other chronic medical illnesses). Subjects were further administered with the study’s instruments including the socio-demorgraphic questionnaire, GHQ-12 and WHOCIDI. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 20. Confidence interval was set at 95% while P- value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The study found a 64.4% (n=232) rate of psychiatric comorbidity among the hypertensive patients with depressive illness the highest with 73(29.4%). This was followed by GAD with 16.1%, sexual dysfunction 9.0%, mixed anxiety and depression 7.8%, substance abuse 2.3%, dysthymia 0.3%, while panic without agoraphobia and personality disorders 0.9% each. Severity of hypertension correlated positively with psychiatric comorbidity. The study found that psychiatric co-morbidity among the hypertensive patient is common in UPTH. It therefore becomes imperative that the intervention measures for chronic disorders of these natures should include a well planned, elaborate and articulated neuropsychiatric evaluation for an effective and holistic management of these patients.