Effects of Care givers counselling on Depression among People Living with HIV/AIDs

 There is pandemic of HIV/AIDS all over the world and a new trend is seen in the management of this disease with the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy, and more advancement in medicine, patients now live longer with the disease. These facts have brought about the challenges of managing chronic complications of this condition. The chronic complication of interest in this study is Depression.

 This study thus looked into the effects of caregiver counselling and follow up on Depression among People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), assess the pattern of depression among them, determine the relationship between CD4 count and depression; and between BMI and Depression among PLWHA attending Federal Teaching Hospital Ido-Ekiti.

 A total of 351 patients were considered for the study. An experimental study was performed on 64 Depressed HIV patients (32 intervention group and 32 in the control group). Bar chart and descriptive statistics was employed to explain the data. Yate’s Chi-squared statistics was employed to find out statistical associations between the groups while the p-values were consequently reported. 

 The result shows that there is a  statistically significant effect of caregiver counselling on depression among PLWHA. The percentage of the intervention group that suffered severe depression reduced from 40.6% to 6.2% after the intervention as opposed to a marginal reduction of 34.4% to 31.2% in the control group without intervention. A very strong statistically significant effect with  p-value of 0.001. This shows that the effect of caregiver intervention was statistically significant in the management of Depression among PLWHA. The intervention programme of caregiver in this study resulted in significant improvement in management of depression in the study group. This is likely the only reason that accounts for why more than half of the respondents experienced resolution of depression, because no other intervention was given to that group.

 The attending physician could do well by involving caregivers of PLWHA in the management of these patients.