A high prevalence of depression (37.8%) was found among hypertensive patients in Ethiopia, strongly associated with female sex, uncontrolled blood pressure, longer hypertension duration, and comorbidities.
BACKGROUND: The burden of depression is higher among people with chronic illnesses like hypertension and this comorbid condition leads to poor adherence to treatment and failure of compliance to lifestyle modifications, which in turn, increases risk of cardiovascular complications and mortalities. Low income countries, Ethiopia included, suffer from paucity of information describing the burden of hypertension comorbid with depression, which demands studies to narrow this knowledge gap, such as this one. METHODS: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted in three randomly selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa. Through a systematic random sampling method, a total of 416 known hypertensive patients with follow up in hypertension clinics with in the study period enrolled in the study. Data were collected through structured questionnaire administered by trained interviewer, which latter cleaned, edited and entered in to epi-data version 3.1. Descriptive and bi-variable and binary logistic regression analysis were done using the statistical software, SPSS version 25. Depression was assessed through Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADs). RESULTS: The prevalence of depression among hypertensive patients was found to be 37.8% 95% CI (33.4%-42.5%). The binary logistic regression model revealed that, female sex AOR = 5.37, 95% CI (3.089-9.35), being married AOR = 0.25, 95% CI (0.08-0.78), presence of chronic comorbid illnesses AOR = 3.03, 95% CI (1.78-5.16), uncontrolled blood pressure AOR = 2.80, 95% CI (1.65-4.75), duration of hypertension of 5-10 years AOR = 3.17, 95% CI (1.61-6.23) and more than 10 years AOR = 5.81, 95% CI (2.90-11.65), family history of depression AOR = 4.53, 95% CI (2.37-8.66) and current alcohol consumption AOR = 1.77, 95% CI (1.02-3.07) were significantly associated with depression among hypertensive patients. CONCLUSION: High proportion of depression was observed among hypertensive patients, and socio-demographic, clinical and behavioral characteristics were found to significantly influence the likelihood of occurrence. Health care providers should consider mental health status of hypertensive patients, and counsel for these factors.
Asmare et al. (Tue,) studied this question.