Health Services Utilization Of Depressed Patients Attending The General Out-Patient Department (Gopd) Of Jos University Teaching Hospital (Juth), Jos

📄 Project Abstract

Depression is a common psychiatric disorder in primary health care throughout the world with increasing incidence and prevalence and is often under-treated and under-diagnosed. Consequently, several studies have shown that patients with depression tend to be high utilizers of medical services. This leads to considerable suffering of the patients (for example, it limits activity and productivity). The descriptive cross-sectional study on the health resources utilization and socio-demographic correlates in depressed patients attending General Out-Patient Department (GOPD) of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), Jos was undertaken between November 2006 and March 2007. The study was aimed at determining the frequency of consultations and the use of health care resources (for example, laboratory investigations, x-rays among others) and the relationship between socio demographic variables (for example, sex, age, educational level among others) and the utilization of health resources ...