Psychiatric Comorbidity and Quality of Life in Persons with Diabetes Melitus and People Living With Hiv (Plwhiv) in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus and HIV are two chronic medical diseases associated with psychiatric comorbidity, which further affect the quality of life of the sufferers. The aim of this study, therefore, was to determine and compare the relationship between psychiatric comorbidity and quality of life in persons with diabetes mellitus and PLWHIV. Following ethical approval from the appropriate committee of the hospital and informed consent from the participants, 230 subjects living with HIV and 120 subjects with diabetesmelitus were recruited based on the study’s inclusion and exclusion criteria. This was after a pilot study. Subjects were further administered with the study’s instruments including the socio-demographic questionnaire, GHQ-12, the brief version of the WHO Quality of Life instrument (WHOQOL-Bref) and WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WHO CIDI). The socio-demographic questionnaire, GHQ-12 and WHOQOL-Bref were self-administered while the WHO CIDI was based on interview by the researcher. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 20 statistical package. Confidence interval was set at 95% while P- value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The study found a prevalence of psychiatric co-morbidity of 17.3% among PLWHIV. For PLWHIV, domain scores quality of life were as follows; 60.71±15.57, 62.34±26.32, 61.57±25.04, 55.15±14.00 and 65.81±21.84 for physical, psychological, social relationship, environment domains and general health facet respectively. For persons with diabetes mellitus, domain scores quality of life were as follows; 51.97+ 14.671, 56.20+ 22.186, 57.51 + 26.13, 52.01+ 16.91and 48.34 + 22.44for physical, psychological, social relationship, environment domains and general health facet respectively. Furthermore, presence of psychiatric comorbidity significantly inversely correlated with quality of life among persons with both medical diseases. The findings in this study indicate diabetis mellitus and HIV infection are both chronic debilitating illnesses, associated with psychiatric co-morbidity, which significantly inversely correlated with quality of life of the sufferers. The results indicate that the management of both medical conditions should include attention to their mental health status and subjective quality of life of these patients in order to enhance the quality of care.