Prevalence and correlates of neurocognitive impairment and psychiatric disorders among schoolchildren in Wakiso District, Uganda: a cross-sectional study

Margaret Nampijja; Wilber Sembajjwe; Harriet Mpairwe; Richard Mpango; Eugene Kinyanda

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17005.2

Prevalence and correlates of neurocognitive impairment and psychiatric disorders among schoolchildren in Wakiso District, Uganda: a cross-sectional study

Wellcome Open Res. 2022 Sep 29:6:217. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17005.2. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Margaret Nampijja^{1

2}, Wilber Sembajjwe¹, Harriet Mpairwe^{1

3}, Richard Mpango^{1

4}, Eugene Kinyanda^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit, Entebbe, Uganda.
² Maternal and Child Wellbeing Unit, African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya.
³ London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London, London, WC1E 7HT, UK., UK.
⁴ Department of Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Soroti University, Soroti, Uganda.
⁵ Department of Psychiatry, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala,, Kampala, P.O. Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda.

Abstract

Background: There is limited data on the burden of mental disorders among children in the general population in Africa. We examined the prevalence and correlates of neurocognitive and psychiatric disorders among schoolchildren in Uganda. Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled 322 schoolchildren aged 5-17years in Wakiso, Uganda. We assessed for neurocognitive impairment using the Kaufmann-Assessment-Battery, and psychiatric disorders (major-depressive-disorder (MDD), attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD), generalised-anxiety-disorder (GAD), and substance-use-disorder (SUD)) using the parent version of the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory-5, and Youth Inventory-4R Self Report. Prevalence and risk factors were determined using respectively descriptive statistics, and univariable and multivariable logistic regression. Results: Twenty-five participants (8%) had neurocognitive impairment. Nineteen (5.9%) participants had MDD, nine (2.8%) had ADHD, seven (2.2%) had GAD, 14 (8.6%) had SUD; and 30 (9.3%) had any psychiatric disorder. Among the exposure variables examined in this study, including asthma, age, sex, grade of schooling, type of school and maternal and father's education and family socio-economic status, only asthma was associated with the disorders (MDD). Conclusions: The relatively high burden of mental disorders in this general population of children warrants targeted screening of those at risk, and treatment of those affected. Further, future studies should extensively investigate the factors that underlie the identified psychiatric disorders in this and similar general populations.

Keywords: adolescents; children; disorders; neurocognitive; non-clinical; psychiatric.

Grants and funding

The asthma study (SONA) was funded by the Wellcome Trust through a Training fellowship grant assigned to Harriet Mpairwe (grant number 102512), and a Senior fellowship to Prof Alison Elliott (grant number 095778). The mental health work was supported by core funds from the MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit. The MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit is jointly funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under the MRC/DFID Concordat agreement and is also part of the EDCTP2 programme supported by the European Union. The funding bodies had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and writing the manuscript.