Taking the First Step towards Entrenching Mental Health in the Workplace: Insights from a Pilot Study Among HR Personnel in Nigeria

BACKGROUND: The continued relevance of optimal employee mental  health to sustainable human capital development in the workplace  underscores the need to start harnessing all resources that can be  mobilized to promote the entrenchment of workplace mental health. The strategic place of workplace Human Resource (HR) units in formulating and implementing workplace welfare schemes makes them potential partners. To actualize this, it is important to initially assess the preparedness of HR personnel for, and the possible barriers to entrenching mental health in the workplace. To suggest the initial course of action and to serve as a  template for a robust large-scale study, we conduct a pilot assessment of the experience with, attitudes towards, and level of prioritization of mental health in the workplace among a cohort of HR personnel in Nigeria.METHODS: Participants were recruited in the course of a seminar/workshop and questionnaires were developed by authors to assess variables of interest. Attitudes were examined using an adapted form of the Link's Discrimination-Devaluation (LD-D) scale.RESULTS:A total of 90 human-resource personnel completed the  questionnaires. Only 16% of the participants reported having handled the case of an employee with a suspected mental health problem in the preceding 2 years. Attitudes toward employees and prospective employees with mental illness were largely poor. For instance, more than 70% werelikely to consider for employment someone with a pre-existing physical disability than for someone with a history of mental illness. In terms of workplace health promotion priorities, physical health seminars took wide precedence over mental health seminars.CONCLUSION: The preliminary findings of this pilot study justify a need to conduct a large scale study. Significant challenges encountered in the course of this pilot study were highlighted while insights were drawn for the conduct of the main study/project.KEY WORDS: mental health, occupational health, workplace, HR personnel, attitude

Pattern of psychiatric inpatient admission in Ibadan: implications for service organisation and planning

Introduction: Reports from different parts of the world has shown a seasonal pattern in psychiatric admission. Seasonal changes in climatic and social situations have been attributed. Such audit of psychiatric services is not a popular research venture in Nigeria. Objectives: The study aims to describe the pattern of old psychiatric admissions in a tertiary health facility and the socio-cultural and environmental factors that may influence the pattern. Methods: Data on monthly admissions over a 5-year period were extracted from the admission and discharge records kept by the nursing services unit. The data was processed using Microsoft excel and the pattern over the 5-year period was examined using graphical representations. Results: There were 2140 admissions during the review period, comprising 1138 ( 53.2%) females and 1002 males. The mean new admission per month was 34.55 (M:16.7, F:18.96) with a standard deviation of 7.49 for all admissions. There was a seasonal pattern in admission. Some socio-cultural and environmental factors that may explain the pattern were examined. Conclusion: This study suggests a seasonal pattern of psychiatric admission in a tertiary health facility in Ibadan. Recommendations were made on how to make use of the knowledge of the seasonal pattern of admission to mitigate disruptions in workload that may be occasioned by the observed pattern.Keywords: Admission, Pattern, Psychiatric, Seasons, Nigeri

Children within the Juvenile Justice System in Nigeria: Psychopathology and Psychosocial Needs

Background: Many children in Nigeria face a life of poverty, family instability, inadequate educational opportunities and poor physical andmental health which hinder their ability to develop into healthy adults, live an improved quality of life or fulfil their life aspirations. These factors have also been associated with juvenile delinquency and need for institutional care.Objectives: As a step toward providing comprehensive services for incarcerated children in Nigeria, this study aimed to identify the psychosocial needs as well as types of psychopathology among a groupof incarcerated children at the Ibadan remand home.Methods: A cross-sectional survey of children and adolescents at the Ibadan remand home was carried out using a semi-structured questionnaire.Results: A total of 59 children were assessed over a one year period. Majority (90%) were in need of care and protection. All (100%) had significant psychosocial needs presenting as difficulty with their primarysupport, economic, social environment, or educational systems. Majority (97%) also demonstrated significant psychopathology and anxiety, suicidal and depressive symptoms were the most commonly elicited.Conclusions: Incarcerated children in this study showed significant mental health needs which need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This should be carried out through the collaborative efforts of mental health professionals with various stakeholders in child care.Keywords: Children, Psychopathology, Psychosocial, Nigeria, Juvenil

The effects of representation and analogy on engineering idea generation

The use of examples in idea generation is a common practice intended to provide inspiration from existing products to the designing of new ones. Examples can be taken from the Internet, engineering textbooks, analogical databases, literature, a company’s prior designs, or from a competitor company, prior work by the designer, and many other sources. These examples are represented in various ways, such as hand sketches, pictures, computer-aided designs (CAD), physical models, activity diagrams, shape grammars, text descriptions, etc. Design representations can also be broken down by function in the form of functional models and decompositions. The use of these visual or physical examples allows engineers to get a clearer picture of how a design or component works and enables them to have a better understanding of the overall design and function. Each representation has inherent advantages and disadvantages in the way that they portray a design. Examples are sources for analogies. Analogies from nature, where biological organisms have solved challenging problems in novel ways, are very useful in engineering idea generation and solution retrieval. This process is called biologically inspired design. Engineers often use biologically inspired design to solve problems while increasing creativity and expanding the solution space. Using this method, engineers are able to learn from nature and apply biological principles to real world engineering problems to make effective designs and produce innovative solutions. It is important to have a clearer understanding of how the use of the representations and characteristics of examples as external stimuli affect the idea generation process in engineering design. Understanding these processes will be invaluable in offering guidelines for how engineering design should be done and what types of external stimuli should be used to allow for innovation and creativity to be enhanced. This dissertation presents four studies that focus on understanding ways that examples can be used to improve the idea generation process. Three of these studies focus on how the representation of externally imposed examples, which may be used as analogues, influences creativity during idea generation while also minimizing design fixation, which occurs when designers adhere to the features of their own initial design solutions or to features of existing examples. The fourth study focuses on the use of examples as sources for analogical mapping and how these examples produce innovative solutions during idea generation. The first study compares CAD, sketch, and photograph representation presented individually. The second study compares CAD and sketch representation presented together, and the third study examines function tree and sketch representations. The fourth study looks at the real-world context and impact of examples used as sources for analogical mapping to inspire innovative solutions. The results of the studies show that CAD representations of good examples are effective in allowing engineers to identify the key working principles of a design and help to develop higher quality design concepts. CAD representations also cause more fixation to the example’s features. Function trees do not cause nor break fixation compared to a control condition, but do reduce fixation compared with sketches. Biological examples can be successfully used as analogues during engineering idea generation to create novel and effective design solutions to relevant and real-world engineering problems.Ph.D

Comparison of haematological parameters determined by the Sysmex KX - 2IN automated haematology analyzer and the manual counts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study was designed to determine the correlation between heamatological parameters by Sysmex KX-21N automated hematology analyzer with the manual methods.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>Sixty (60) subjects were randomly selected from both apparently healthy subjects and those who have different blood disorders from the University of Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Ituku-Ozalla, Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. Three (3)mls of venous blood sample was collected aseptically from each subject into tri-potassium ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid (K₃EDTA) for the analysis of haematological parameters using the automated and the manual methods.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The blood film report by the manual method showed that 50% of the subjects were normocytic-normochromic while the other 50% revealed different abnormal blood pictures. Also, there were statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in mean cell hemoglobin concentrations (MCHC) between the two methods. Similarly, the mean (S.E) values of hemoglobin, packed cell volume, platelet and total white cell counts demonstrated statistically significant difference (p < 0.001) and correlated positively when both methods were compared.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>From the present study, it can be concluded that the automated hematology analyzer readings correlated well with readings by the standard manual method, although the latter method gave additional diagnostic information on the blood pictures. While patients' care and laboratory operations could be optimized by using manual microscopic examination as a reflective substitute for automated methods, usage of automated method would ease our workload and save time for patients.</p

Factors Associated with Treatment Success among Pulmonary Tuberculosis and HIV Co-infected Patients in Oyo State, South West-Nigeria

Background The co-existence of Tuberculosis (TB) and Human immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is  known to increase morbidity and mortality in patients. The determinants of treatment success in TBHIV co-infection are not yet well studied. Such information can help optimise treatment and reduce morbidity and mortality.Objective To determine factors associated with antitubercular treatment success among TB I HIV coinfected patients.Methods A cross sectional study was carried out in fifty  three DOT clinics and treatment centres  using tuberculosis patient's records from January 2009 to December 2010 in Oyo state, Nigeria. The study population consisted of 7905 tuberculosis patients. Information on variables of interest were obtained with the use of data extraction forms. Chi-square and logistic regression were used to test the relationship between TB I HIV coinfection and socio-demographic variables, clinical characteristics and treatment success.Results Prevalence ofTB I HIV co-infection was found to be 14.2%. Patients with TB-HIV co-infection  were younger and more likely to be females. There were statistically significant association between treatment success and gender, marital status and patient point of care. After adjusting for other variables, it was found that patients receiving treatment in private facilities were independently less likely to be successfully treated compared with those receiving care in Public facilities. Female patients were also independently more likely to have better treatment outcome than male.Conclusion In addition to patients' point of care, gender of the patients can adversely impact on their treatment success. Efforts from the government to strengthening the private public mix, health education and media awareness on adherence to treatment to improve treatment success should be intensified in the country.Keywords: Tube rc ulosis; Human immunodeficiency virus, Directly observe therapy short-course;  Treatment success, Coinfection

Prevalence and Correlates of Psychiatric Disorders among Residents of a Juvenile Remand Home in Nigeria: Implications for Mental Health Service Planning

BACKGROUND: Research has established that psychiatric disorders are common among children and adolescents within the juvenile justice system.  However, the bulk of these researches had been from the developed countries, with very limited data from sub-Sahara Africa. In a region like sub-Sahara Africa with acute shortage of mental healthcare resources, availability of data on mental health needs of children within the juvenile justice system is about the only way to ensure that they are not excluded from needed services. This study aims to determine the pattern, prevalence and correlates of psychiatric disorders among the residents of a juvenile justice facility in Nigeria and to speculate appropriate policy responses.METHODS: Using a cross-sectional comparative study design, 60 consecutive residents of the Ibadan juvenile Remand home and 60 randomly selected age- and gender-matched school going adolescents were evaluated for the presence of current and lifetime psychiatric disorders. The Kiddies Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia was used to assess psychiatric disorders. Logistic regression was done to determine socio-demographic variables that were independently associated with the presence of lifetime psychiatric disordersRESULTS: Thirty eight (63%) of the Remand Home participants had at least one lifetime psychiatric disorder compared with 14 (23%) among the comparison group (p &lt; 0.001). Thirteen (22%) of the Remand Home participants had at least one current psychiatric disorder compared with 2 (3%) among the comparison group (p = 0.004). Disruptive behaviour disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders were the most common psychiatric disorders among the Remand Home residents. Indices of family disruption and inconsistency in caregivers were the key predictors of psychiatric disorders.CONCLUSION: Study has established further that psychiatric disorders are common among children within the juvenile justice system and that there is a need for appropriate policy response. Some policy directions were highlighted.KEY WORDS: Juvenile justice, psychiatric disorders, remand home, mental health, polic

Do Patients on Antipsychitics Know the Role of Anti-Cholinergic drugs in their Treatment? Reports from an Outpatient Clinic in South-West Nigeria

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