Prevalence of Psychotic Disorders of Males and Females at Different Stages of Life Span

Abstract

In order to investigate the prevalence of psychotic disorder of males and females at different stages of life span the study was conducted on new patients attended the outpatients department (OPD) of Pabna Mental Hospital, Pabna, Bangladesh during January to July 2006. Information was collected from the patients and their caregivers tlu·ough interview method. Three hypotheses were formulated to test in this study. The first hypothesis states that Psychotic disorders are more prevalent in males than in females. The second hypothesis states that Schizophrenia is more frequent than other types of psychotic disorders. The third hypothesis states that Psychotic disorders are more prevalent at Early Adulthood stage of life span. The results were analyzed employing chi square test. A total of 2227 (two thousand two hundred and twenty seven) patients were interviewed during the study period. Among them, 1398 ( one thousand three hundred and ninety eight) were psychotic and 829 (eight hundred and twenty nine) were neurotic patients. In order to calculate the frequency of psychotic disorders in males and females the psychotic patients were divided into two groups - males and females and comparison were made between the two groups employing chi square test. The result shows that the frequency of psychotic disorders were significantly higher (p<0.01) in males than in females. The psychotic patients were again classified into different types. There were patients of five types psychotic disorders namely Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective disorder (SAD), Acute schizophrenia like Episode (ASE), Psychoactive Substance related (psychotic) disorder(SRD) and Bipolar affective disorder (BAD) available during the study. Comparison were made among the frequencies of the five types of psychotic disorders. The results shows that, frequency of schizophrenia was significantly highest among the five types of psychotic disorders. In order to analyze the presence of psychotic disorder at different stages of I ife span. -------