Background: Smartphone addiction has become a public health issue. The use of social media has led to unintended consequences, especially among young adults and college students. Unfortunately, the pattern of use, the prevalence of addiction and the relationship with actual psychological morbidity are not clear.
Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of Smartphone addiction and the relationship to the frequency of social media use and psychological morbidity among Nigerian university students.
Method: One hundred and fifty-nine students were recruited through social media invites and direct invitation from Lecture Halls. The socio-demographic forms, the Smartphone Addiction Scale (Short Version) and Self-reporting Questionnaire-20 were administered.
Results: WhatsApp was the most frequently accessed social media phone application (62.9%).Participants who used Instagram had the highest mean score on SAS-SV (31.4±9.4) and SRQ-20 (8.1±5.3). The prevalence of Smartphone addiction was 34.6% (55/159) while 48.4% (77/159) met the criteria for psychological morbidity. A higher proportion of males met the criteria for Smartphone addiction (29; 50.8%). Males had higher mean SAS scores (31.7±9.4) compared to the females (28.1±8.5) (p = 0.01). Smartphone addiction was more frequently associated with psychological morbidity among males (p = 0.01). No significant difference in Smartphone addiction and psychological morbidity was found across ages.
Conclusion: Smartphone addiction is prevalent and associated with psychological morbidity among male undergraduates. There is a need to direct interventions at curbing its prevalence among undergraduates.
Background: Medically unexplained symptoms are frequently encountered by physicians at the primary care level. The complexity lies in the ill-defined nature of the multiple physical symptoms and the similarity to several organic disorders.
Objective: To determine the prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms and relate this to physicians detection rate in a primary care setting in South-west, Nigeria.
Methods: The study was a cross-sectional, descriptive study of consecutive patients of the General Out-patient Department of Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Ogun State. Interviews were conducted on 472 participants using a purposely designed socio-demographic questionnaire and the self-administered Patient Health Questionnaire -15 to screen for somatic symptoms.
Results: The ages of the participants ranged from 18 years to 90 years with the mean of 52.7±20.9 years. Out of the 472 participants, 225 (47.7%) met the criteria for medically unexplained symptoms using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ). Across ages, medically unexplained symptoms were more often diagnosed among younger age groups especially those close to the age of 35 years (59.2%) [χ2 = 12.34, p = 0.02]. There were significant differences in the prevalence of somatisation across different levels of education [χ2= 9.78, p = 0.03]. Physicians were able to diagnose psychological disorders in 12.4% of participants (n = 28) with somatisation disorders.
Conclusion: There was a moderately high prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms in primary health care settings and physicians’ detection rate of somatisation was also low. Physicians in primary health care should have a high index of suspicion for somatisation.
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