Psychiatric Morbidity Among the Children and Adolescents Attending Department of Psychiatry Tertiary Hospital in Nepal

A variety of psychiatric manifestations can be seen in children and adolescent below the age of 19 years. This study aims to examine the socio-demographic, morbidity profiles, and clinical correlates of child and adolescent patients attending the psychiatry out-patient department of Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital over a 1year period. It is a retrospective case record analysis of all child and adolescent patients attending the psychiatry out-patient between Dec 1st 2018-Nov 30th 2019 in Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital, Pravas, Palpa, Nepal. One hundred and forty cases attending the Outpatient department were analyzed. Females comprised 96 (68.6%) and males comprised 44(31.4%). Most of the patients (57.14%) were from 16-19 years group. Cases from urban areas (73 or 52.1% out of 140) predominated the picture. Psychiatric diagnoses was maximum for seizure disorder (33 or 23.6%) followed by conversion disorder(29 or 20.7%), then by depressive disorder (25 or 17.9%) and anxiety disorder (14 or 10% respectively). Majority of females had a diagnosis of conversion disorder (25 or 26%) followed by seizure disorder (23 or 24%), depressive disorder (15 or 15.6%) and anxiety disorder (7 or 7.3%) whereas among the males, most (10 or 22.7%) had the diagnosis of depressive disorder and seizure disorder equally followed by anxiety disorder (7 or 15.9%) and conversion disorder (4 or 9.1%) etc