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Psychotic-like experiences in a conflict-affected population: a cross-sectional study in South Sudan

Touraj Ayazi¹, Leslie Swartz², Arne H Eide³

¹Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, P.O box 1171, Blindern, 0318, Oslo, Norway. touraj.ayazi@medisin.uio.no.

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

|May 30, 2016

Abstract

Purpose:

This study investigates the prevalence of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) and examines exposure to potentially traumatic events and other relevant risk factors for PLEs in the general population of a conflict-affected, low-income country.

Methods:

We conducted a cross-sectional community based study of four Greater Bahr el Ghazal States, South Sudan (n = 1200). The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was applied to investigate exposure to potentially traumatic events. The Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview was used to detect PLEs.

Results:

The estimated prevalence of lifetime PLEs was 23.3 % and the rate of PLEs which were evaluated as bizarre was 9.5 %. Exposure to higher number of potentially traumatic events, younger age, rural residency, being unemployed, not having a regular income and having traditional religion were significantly associated with having PLEs. PLEs were significantly associated with reporting of psychological distress when controlling for other covariates.

Conclusions:

The finding of association between traumatic exposure and PLEs calls for greater attention to the diversity of negative mental health outcomes in conflict-affected populations.

Keywords:

Conflict-affected Potentially traumatic events Psychotic-like experiences South Sudan

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