Main Article Content
Association between HIV infection, sociodemographic characteristics and depression in caregivers of HIV infected children in Enugu, South-East, Nigeria.
Abstract
Background: In the presence of certain factors, HIV infection in children increases the burden of depression in their caregivers. This necessitated the need for this study which aimed to determine the factors that are associated with depression in the caregivers of HIVinfected children.
Methods: A comparative hospital-based study of 352 study participants comprising two groups. The first group was the subjects consisting of 176 caregivers of HIV-infected children and the second was the control consisting of 176 caregivers of HIV negative children. Having met the inclusion criteria, these study participants were screened for HIV infection, their sociodemographic characteristics were obtained and depression in them was assessed using Zung self-rating depression scale (SDS). The essence was to determine the factors that were significantly associated with depression in the subjects.
Results: Forty-three (24.4%) and 133 (75.6%) of the subjects were males and females respectively while 47 (26.7%) and 129 (73.3%) of the control were males and females respectively. Seventy-six (43.2%) of the subjects and 12 (6.8%) of the control group had SDS scores in the depression range and this difference was significant (2 = 62.06, df = 1, p < 0.001). The factors that were significantly associated with depression in the subjects were the age of the HIV-infected children (p = 0.023, OR = 2.28), caregiver’s sex (p = 0.003, OR = 3.25), socioeconomic status (p < 0.001, OR = 4.00), marital status (p < 0.001, OR = 2.18), type of caregivers (p = 0.028, OR = 2.78), spouse support (p = 0.019, OR = 2.08).
Conclusion: There is a high burden of depression among caregivers of HIV-infected children and depression in them is significantly associated with caring for a preadolescent HIVinfected child, female caregivers, lower socioeconomic status, death of a spouse, being a biologic caregiver and lack of spouse support.
