Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of dissociative disorders and somatoform disorders in Burkina Faso

Objective. - The aim of this study was to determine the epidemiological and clinical features of dissociative and somatoform disorders in the psychiatry department of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Yalgado Ouedraogo, in Burkina Faso. Method. - We carried out a retrospective and descriptive study over five years, from January 2003 to December 2007, of patients admitted in the psychiatric department for dissociative and somatoform disorders. The data were extracted from the medical notes and registers of consultation. After identification of the patients, the medical notes were exploited with a structured collect form for data on sociodemographic characteristics, life events and ICD-10 diagnoses. All the data were recorded by the same person. Data analysis was performed with Epi info 2007. Results. - During a period of 5 years, 3967 patients were registered, 179 had the diagnosis of dissociative and somatoform disorders (3.65% of the admissions) and 145 were included in our study. The majority of the patients were followed as outpatients (71%). Women were more represented with a sex ratio of four women to one man. The majority of the patients were young with an average age of 30 and mostly single (57.9%). The majority of the patients had a low academic standard, in connection with young age of the population. A striking biographic event was found in the majority of the cases; essentially family difficulties and death. Neurological symptoms were the most frequent in 63% of the cases. According to ICD-10, dissociative disorders were most frequent (65.6%). Depression was mainly associated in 15 cases. Discussion. - Dissociative disorders and somatoform disorders are frequent in our hospital; we must overcome the difficulties due to the complexity of the diagnosis and the cultural resistances to modern health care to determine the real prevalence of these disorders among the population in Burkina Faso. (C) L'Encephale, Paris, 2011.