Clinical Care Of Patients With Anxiety Disorders Receiving Care At Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic At Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital Addis Ababa Ethiopia A Retrospective Chart Review
Introduction: Anxiety Disorders are a group of disorders that have a core symptom of excessivernfear and anxiety and associated behavioral symptoms. It is a condition that can be experienced byrnanyone but it needs intervention when symptoms become excessively distressing or disabling, orrnreduce quality of life. rnBackground: Anxiety Disorders constitute the leading prevalent mental disorders in the world.rnGlobally, there are around 45.82 million incidences of anxiety disorders and 301.39 millionrnprevalence rate of Anxiety Disorders. The DALYs as estimated by the GBD in 2019 wasrnestimated to be around 28 million years. In Ethiopia, it is estimated that the lifetime prevalencernof anxiety disorders is around 7.5 % in a study done in Addis Ababa. National Institute forrnClinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend the use of psychological interventions inrnanxiety spectrum disorders. The most evidence is for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)rnwhich has the highest empirical evidence whereas the most evidence for pharmacotherapy is thernuse of Antidepressant medications. The treatment gap for mental illness throughout the world isrnuniversally large. Despite the enormous burden Anxiety disorders pose to our health care systemrnthere hasn’t been much evaluation done regarding the quality of care mental health services. rnObjective: the objective of the study was to evaluate the types of care patients with anxietyrnreceived including the psychological and pharmacological treatment provided to them. Thisrnstudy also aims to determine the level of patient engagement to treatment and to determine thernassociated factors. rnMethod: A Retrospective chart (EMR) review was done to explore the socio-demographicrncharacteristics, Clinical Evaluation, Treatment modalities offered and Treatment Engagement ofrnpatients with Anxiety disorders in psychiatric outpatient department of Tikur Anbessarnspecialized hospital patients that visited the OPD from Hamle 1, 2010 E.C to Hamle 30, 2013rnEC. Once the data was obtained it was exported to Excel spreadsheet and it was cleaned andrnchecked for errors and missing variables, and then it was exported to SPSS version 26 andrndescriptive analysis was done. rnResult: This study found the commonest diagnosis to be GAD (58.5%) and the secondrncommonest diagnosis was Panic Disorder (32.7%). The study found that there is a highrnpsychiatric comorbidity of anxiety disorders with MDD and other anxiety disorders accounting rnrnfor 33.3% and 28.3% respectively. Out of the other anxiety disorders, a higher co-occurrencernbetween panic disorders and generalized anxiety disorders was seen. From the 98 cases that werernin the study 32 (32.6%) were offered only medications while 18 (18.4%) of patients were offeredrnonly psychotherapy. Both of these modalities were offered in combination in 25 (25.5%) of therncases. Neither medication nor psychotherapy was offered for 23(23.5%) of the cases in the study.rnPsychoeducation, psychotherapy referral and prescription of medication were found to increasernthe likelihood of treatment engagement in the study.