Abstract:
Introduction: Globally, depression is one of the three leading causes of disease and it will be the
second leading cause of world disability by 2030. The prevalence of depression in sub Saharan
Africa, range from 15 to 30%. In Ethiopia, depression was found to be seventh leading cause of
disease burden and prevalence of depression has been increased in hospital than community
setting because hospital environment itself is stressful. However, in Eastern Ethiopia, where
substance use like Khat is very rampant, study related to magnitude of depression and associated
factors among adult inpatients is not studied yet.
Objective: To assess Depression and associated factors among adult inpatients at public
hospitals of Harari Regional State, Eastern Ethiopia from February 01 -28/2017.
Methodology: Hospital based cross sectional study design was employed on 492 admitted adult
patients in Harari region hospitals. Consecutive sampling method was used to include study
population. The data were collected by six data collectors using structured interviewer
administered questionnaire. After checking completeness the collected data were entered into
Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20.0 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate
Logistic regression analysis were employed. P value of 0.05 or less was considered to be
statistically significance and interpretation. The result of analysis was presented by using
frequencies, summary measures, texts, tables and graphs. A total of 489 patients were
interviewed with response rate of 99.4%. Having duration of 1-2weeks in the hospital
[(AOR=2.02, 95% CI: (1.28, 3.19)], being diagnosed with chronic conditions [(AOR=4.06, 95%
CI: (2.23, 7.40)], being users of psychoactive drugs [(AOR=2.24, 95% CI: (1.18, 4.24)] and
Patients those who admitted to surgical ward [(AOR=0.50, 95% CI: (0.31, 0.81)] were
significantly associated with depression.
Conclusion and recommendation: Prevalence of depression among admitted inpatients was
high. Prolonged stay, diagnoses with chronic disease and use of psycho active drug were factors
that caused patient to develop depression. Being admitted to surgical ward was related to low
depression. Therefore increasing the awareness of benefits of early diagnosis of patients to
prevent major form of depression and strengthening the clinical set up and establishing good
referral linkage with mental health institutions was consideres to be costeffective method to
reduce its prevalence.
