Factors associated with psychosocial services in ogun state, Nigeria

Belonging to a social network group may influence a person's decisions to engage in desired behavior.

The objective of our study was to determine factors associated with utilization of psychosocial group services among people living with human immunodeficiency virus acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (PLWHAs) in a Teaching Hospital in Sagamu, Southwestern Nigeria.

This was an analytical cross-sectional study. All consenting PLHAs who attended the anti-retroviral clinic (ART) clinic during the study period were recruited into the study.

A structured self-administered questionnaire was used to collect relevant information and a total of 205 PLWHAs were interviewed.

The data analysis focused on univariate frequency table and bivariate cross tabulations that identify important relationships between the variables. Odds ratio (OR) at 95% confidence level (CI) and Chi-squared and t-tests were also computed.

The overall point utilization of psychosocial services among the PLWHAs was 23.4%. Utilization of psychosocial services was statistically significantly associated with religion (χ(2) = 11.74, P = 0.003), disclosure of human immunodeficiency virus status (χ(2) = 9.18, P = 0.01) and satisfactory self-reported health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) (χ(2) = 5.67, P = 0.017) while sex (χ(2) = 0.02, P = 0.96), education (χ(2) = 4.67, P = 0.32) tribe (χ(2) = 1.46, P = 0.48) adherence to ART drugs (χ(2) = 0.44, P = 0.51), mental health status (χ(2) = 0.64, P = 0.42) and occupation (χ(2) = 3.61, P = 0.61) were not. The only predictor of utilization of psychosocial group services was religion (OR = 0.44, CI = 0.23-0.84).

This study shows the effectiveness of the psychosocial networks group in improving the overall HRQOL of the PLWHAs.