Impact of Climate Change on Schizophrenia Patients with Sex Stratifications: Variability of Temperature and Relative Humidity Effects

Abstract

The impact of temperature and relative humidity on sex differences among schizophrenia patients at Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Akure, and Ondo State, Nigeria was examined in this paper. Two independent variables (temperature and relative humidity) and one dependent variable (number of schizophrenia patients that visited the hospital from (2010-2017) data were collected. The population of study were 13,834 (in-patients and out-patients) for the period of eight years; that comprised 7,290 (52.70%) female and 6,544 (47.30%) male schizophrenia patients. The collected data were analyzed with the use of single regression and multivariate regression analyses. This study therefore, found that climate parameters: relative humidity and temperature had overlapping effects on the number of male and female schizophrenia patients that consulted at the hospital. It was found that increase in temperature had negative association with the number of schizophrenia patients i.e., both sexes were vulnerable to the risk of schizophrenia (mental ill-health); and that the number of female schizophrenia patients recorded for the eight years was higher in number compared to the male schizophrenia patients. It was also observed that the vulnerability of males to the risk of schizophrenia with reference to relative humidity increased and differed from the female vulnerability. This is an indication that other factors -bio psychosocial, environmental, culture etc. may not have made male and female population equally vulnerable at the risks of schizophrenia. The probability that the male population is more vulnerable to the risk of schizophrenia cases as relative humidity and overlapping effect increases is 0.13 and 0.22 respectively for male while that of female is 0.12 and 0.15 respectively. The number of schizophrenia patients diagnosed and traced to increase in relative humidity and overlapping effect was 2,041 females and 3,099 males; 2,019 females and 1,718 males respectively. This might be due to the fact that: male patients respond to treatment very slowly as compared to females; the recovery period of males with schizophrenia was longer than for females; consequently, the rate of discharge from hospital for male schizophrenia patients was lower than the discharge of the female schizophrenia patients; the cognitive deficits and memory delay was more in male schizophrenia patients than the female. Therefore, all these can aggravate as relative humidity increases coupled with the: risk of psychoactive substance use; the protective effect of estrogen is lower in male than female; psychoactive substance consumption rate is higher in male than in female. Also, increasing rate of schizophrenia is caused as relative humidity increases because testosterone reduction in male occurs during hot weather, and reduction in the brain gray matter in male tend to reduce neuron density.