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 and controls were administered with Sociodemographic Questionnaire and Zung Selfrating Depression Scale (SDS). Results: A total of 64 parents of children with CHD (subjects) were studied with equal number of controls. The subjects were made up of 54 (84.4%) mothers (females), and mean age was 36.1±6.6 years. About two-thirds of both subjects and controls were of the low socio-economic class. Over 80% of subjects screened positive for depression with SDS compared to about 30% of controls, with significant difference of p=0.00*. Majority of the subjects that screened positive for depression were cases of mild depression (67.2%). Conclusion: Our study has shown high risk of emotional distress among parents of children with CHD in our environment (Nigeria). Thus, there is the need to put in place measures for effective management of CHD in the country for possible attenuation