Counselling Needs of Sickle-Cell Anaemia Adolescents in Ekiti State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Sickle-cell disease is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of hemoglobin (Hb) structure and the most common of the hemoglobinopathies. Hence, this study investigated counseling needs of sickle-cell anaemia adolescents in Ekiti State. Descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. Purposive sampling technique was adopted to draw a total of 121 respondents. A questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. Mean and rank order were used to answer the research question while chi-square and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that counselling needs of adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia include counsellors are expected to encourage adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia to have confidence in self among others. The findings also revealed that there was a significant difference in the counselling needs of adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia based on gender while there was no significant difference in the counselling needs of adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia based on religion. The counselling needs of adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia include adolescents with sickle-cell anaemia easily comprehend the counselling therapy of counsellor among others. It was recommended that Government should offer standard health care for all adolescents with Sickle-cell disease.