ABSTRACT
This paper describes a cross-sectional study with subjects and raters blind to HIV status to assess psychiatric morbidity associated with HIV in a sample of working adults in Western Kenya. Subjects were recruited from an occupational health clinic for statutory annual health checks of workers in the food industry. Psychiatric interviews and neuropsychological tests were conducted. Of 230 subjects, 34% were HIV positive. Women had a higher rate than men, and those who worked as bargirls or were divorced, widowed or separated were particularly at risk. There were no substantial differences in psychiatric morbidity or neuropsychological functioning between the HIV-positive and HIV-negative subjects.
PIP: As part of a Kenyan Medical Research Institute study of sexually transmitted diseases, psychiatric and neuropsychological functioning was assessed and related to HIV status. All 373 workers in the food industry who attended an occupational health clinic in Kenya's Nyanza Province for statutory annual health checks during a 10-week period in 1994, were eligible for study enrollment. Of the 337 study volunteers (mean age, 29.1 years), HIV status was available for only 230 subjects due to the loss of specimens between collection and laboratory delivery or the illegibility of numerical codes on specimen tubes; psychiatric and neuropsychological data were collected from 229. 78 workers (34%) were HIV-positive and another 14 (6%) had indeterminate results. No substantial differences in psychiatric morbidity, including depression or performance on neuropsychological tests, were found between HIV-positive workers and HIV-negative controls. Previous studies have documented substantial psychiatric morbidity and cognitive impairment in HIV-infected patients. The methodology of the present study differed from previous research, however, in that volunteers were asymptomatic and unaware they were being tested for HIV and interviewers were uninformed as to the subject's HIV status.
