HIV Prevalence Among Hospitalized Patients at the Main Psychiatric Referral Hospital in Botswana

Abstract

We examined HIV prevalence among patients 18-49 year olds admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Botswana in 2011 and 2012. The retrospective study analyzed females (F) and males (M) separately, comparing proportions with Chi square test and continuous variables with Wilcoxon rank-sum test, assessing significance at the 5% level. HIV seroprevalence among hospitalized psychiatric patients was much more common among females (53%) compared with males (19%) (p < 0.001). These women also appeared more vulnerable to infection compared with females in the general population (29%) (p < 0.017). Among both women and men, HIV-infection appeared most common among patients with organic mental disorders (F:68%, M:41%) and neurotic, stress related and somatoform disorders (F:68%, M:42%). The largest proportion of HIV infections co-occurred among patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizotypal and other psychotic disorders (F:48%; M:55%), mood (affective) disorders (F:21%; M:16%) and neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (F:16%; M:20%). Interventions addressing both mental health and HIV among women and men require development.

Keywords: Gender; HIV/AIDS; Hospitalized; Mental health; Psychiatry.

FIGURE 1:

SHES Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) for HIV-Infection among Psychiatric Inpatients This DAG depicts the model of cause and effect relationships considered in our statistical analysis. DAGs help guide the appropriate selection of variables to condition on, to control for confounding of exposure variables on the outcome variable HIV-infection.