Predictive Psychiatric Disorders among Children and Adolescents Attending Pediatric Outpatient Department of a Tertiary Hospital in Dhaka

Introduction: Psychiatric morbidity is now a burning issue in Bangladesh and the children and adolescents of Bangladesh are suffering increasingly. Psychiatric disorders are more common in children with chronic and acute pediatric disorders. Considerable numbers of children attending in pediatric outpatient department suffer from emotional and behavioral disorders. Objectives: The study had been designed to find out the proportion of emotional, conduct, hyperactivity and social difficulties among the children and adolescents attending pediatric outpatient department of a tertiary care hospital. Method: This was a quantitative, cross-sectional and descriptive study and was carried out from May 2016 to June 2016 in pediatric outpatient department of a prime tertiary level hospital of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Purposive and consecutive sampling technique had been used and sample size was 100. Both male and female children aged 4 to 18 years were included. Semi-structured questionnaire containing socio-demographic and other relevant clinical information and validated parent version of Bangla Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) for screening psychopathology had been applied to the consented parents or caregivers of the respondents. Version 15.0 of the SPSS had been used for statistical analysis. Results: Mean age of the subjects was 8.17 years. Majority (80%) of the subjects were 4 to 10 years. The male female ratio was1.3:1. Any form of predictive psychiatric disorder was 12%. Among them 9% was ADHD, 5% Emotional disorder and 5% was of Conduct disorder. Proportion of any predictive psychiatric disorder was significantly higher in adolescents than in children (25% Vs 8.8%). All the categories of psychiatric disorders were also highly prevalent in the adolescents. Overall, 20% of the cases had peer problem and they were significantly present in the cases with predictive psychiatric disorder.Conclusion: This study supports the other findings in of predicting psychiatric disorders among the pediatric outpatients attendee population that would ultimately help in applying suitable screening procedure and importance of identification and subsequent management of psychiatric conditions.