Department of Behavioural Medicine, Lagos State University Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria.
Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2020 Nov-Dec;73:101633. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2020.101633. Epub 2020 Nov 11.
The current body of knowledge on the prevalence rate of psychiatric morbidity among adolescents and youth within the juvenile justice system in sub-Saharan Africa is yet to be systematically synthesized.. Consequently, African literature in the field has remained obscure, out of consideration in global discourses around the subject.; and incoherent to policy-makers. The situation has also hampered the identification of and filling of regional research-gaps in the field. The aim of this study, therefore, was to conduct a systematic scoping review of available data on psychiatric morbidity among adolescents and youth within the juvenile justice system in sub-Saharan Africa. The search was conducted using PubMed/MEDLINE, Science Direct, EMBASE, CINAHL and Psych Info. Additional searches were done in Google Scholar and African Journal Online (AJOL) databases. Twenty-six studies from 21 different research projects were identified. More than two-thirds were conducted in Nigeria and published within the last decade. Similar to what has been established around the world, the prevalence rate of psychiatric disorder was often very high, with a range of 59.7% - 63.0% among respondents. Key strengths of identified studies included use of standardized clinician-administered instruments for assessment and exploration of a wide range of psychiatric disorders. The main weaknesses in the studies included male gender-bias, lack of normative comparison groups, emphasis on custodial settings with little data on non-custodial systems, and considerable length of time-lag between the points of incarceration and psychiatric evaluation among the samples studied.. The study concluded that a modest number of studies have been conducted on psychiatric morbidity among justice-involved adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa, but there are still significant research gaps which could be bridged in order to aid context-appropriate interventions.
目前，关于撒哈拉以南非洲少年司法系统中青少年精神疾病发病率的知识体系尚未得到系统综合。因此，该领域的非洲文献仍然鲜为人知，在全球有关该主题的讨论中被忽视，也不为决策者所关注。这种情况也阻碍了该领域区域性研究空白的确定和填补。因此，本研究的目的是对撒哈拉以南非洲少年司法系统中青少年精神疾病发病率的现有数据进行系统的范围界定审查。搜索使用了 PubMed/MEDLINE、Science Direct、EMBASE、CINAHL 和 Psych Info。还在 Google Scholar 和 African Journal Online (AJOL) 数据库中进行了额外搜索。从 21 个不同的研究项目中确定了 26 项研究。其中超过三分之二来自尼日利亚，并且是在过去十年内发表的。与世界各地的情况类似，精神障碍的发病率往往非常高，受访者的发病率范围为 59.7%至 63.0%。确定研究的主要优势包括使用标准化的临床医生管理工具进行评估，并探索广泛的精神疾病。研究中的主要弱点包括男性性别偏见、缺乏规范的对照组、强调拘留设施，而对非拘留系统的数据很少、以及在被研究样本中，监禁和精神评估之间的时间滞后相当长。研究结论认为，在撒哈拉以南非洲，只有为数有限的研究涉及涉及司法的青少年的精神疾病发病率，但仍存在重大的研究空白，需要加以填补，以便为适当的干预措施提供依据。
