Abstract:
Background: - Schizophrenia is a persistent and disabling psychotic illness comprises different
symptoms one of which is sleep problem. Although sleep disturbances occur in 30–80% of
schizophrenic patients and diminished sleep quality are common in schizophrenia, studies about
sleep quality and association with worsening of the illness are little. So, this study is aimed to fill
a little gap in this area of study.
Objectives: - To assess sleep quality and its associated factors among patients with
schizophrenia on followup treatment at psychiatric clinic, Jimma University Medical Center.
Methods: - A hospital based cross sectional study design using consecutive sampling method
among 411 people with schizophrenia was used. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index at cut off five
was used to assess quality of sleep. Severity of psychotic symptoms and medication adherence
was assessed by positive and negative syndrome scale and Morisky medication adherence scale
respectively and substance use was assessed by adopted World Health Organization Alcohol,
Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test version 3.0. Data were entered to Epi data
3.1 and analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. Logistic regression was used to assess the association
between independent variables and dependent variable. P-value of < 0.05 was considered as
statistically significant.
Result: -Quality of sleep was poor among 236 (57.4%) of the participants and majority (71%) of
them had reported sleep disturbance in general. Majority (70.6%) of the participants was male
and primary school is dominant educational status (33.3%). Urban residence 4.59(2.20, 9.58),
high antipsychotic medication adherence 0.07(0.03, 0.15), khat ever use 2.72(1.31, 5.68),
severity of positive psychotic symptoms 14.64(6.25, 34.29) and overall psychopathology 3.25
(1.54, 6.84) were significantly associated with poor sleep quality.
Conclusion: -The result suggested that prevalence of poor sleep quality was high in people with
schizophrenia. Sleep should be routinely assessed and managed during follow up visits in these
groups of patients. Antipsychotic medication adherence should be encouraged and comorbid use
of psychoactive substances like khat should be controlled.
