Major mental disorders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. III. Neurotic and somatoform disorders

This report presents estimates of the lifetime and point (one-month) preval ence of phobic anxiety, dissociative, other anxiety and somatoform disorder s based on a survey conducted in Addis Ababa between September and December of 1994. An Amharic version of the CIDI was used to collect data from a ra ndom community sample of 1420 individuals aged 15 and above. Phobic anxiety disorders were found to be the most common of all anxiety disorders, with lifetime prevalence of 4.8%. The lifetime prevalence for dissociative disor ders was 0.8% and for other anxiety disorders it was 2.7%. The prevalence o f somatoform disorders was 3.1%. The lifetime prevalence for all the above neurotic and somatoform disorders was 10.8%. Point prevalence estimates (pe rcent) for the disorders were as follows: phobic anxiety disorders, 4.4; ot her anxiety disorders, 1.2; dissociative disorders, 0.4; and somatoform dis orders, 2.5. After adjusting for several potential confounders, women had o ver a two-fold risk of having neurotic and somatoform disorders compared to men, odds ratio (OR), 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.38 (1.78, 3.12). Ag e was also inversely associated with the disorders. Those aged 60 and above had a 60% lower risk compared to those aged 15-24 years, OR (95% CI): 0.41 (0.20, 0.81). The 25% decreased risk for the employed, compared to the une mployed, was also not statistically significant. Education, marital status, and ethnicity were not significantly associated with neurotic and somatofo rm disorders.