Abstract
Background: To study minor psychiatric disorders
in staff nurses working in a tertiary care hospital.
Methods: In this cross sectional descriptive study
staff nurses(n=100) were evaluated in two phases.. In
phase I, all were screened by using self-reporting
questionaire-20 (SRQ-20) Urdu version. In phase II,
all the staff nurses (n=29) scoring above the cut-off
score of 7 and 10% random sample of those scoring
below the cut-off score of 7,were interviewed using
Present State Examination (PSE). The diagnoses
generated by PSE were confirmed and labeled
according to ICD-10.
Results: Frequency of minor psychiatric
morbidities was 27%. Depression was the most
prevalent minor psychiatric morbidity (15% of whole
sample, n=100, and 55.6% of those who received
psychiatric diagnoses n=27) followed by generalized
anxiety disorder (5% of whole sample and 18.5% of
those who got some psychiatric diagnoses).
Depression was associated with middle age,
separation, issulessness, widowhood and children
more than four..
Conclusion: A significant number of staff nurses
in a tertiary care health facility had poor mental
health and improving this situation could lead to the
up-gradation of overall health care standards.