Somatic Complaints in a Sample of Nigerian Adults: Contributions of Stressful Life Events, Gender and Age.
The regular exposure to life stressors as experienced by Nigerians orchestrated by factors such as high cost of livelihood, insecurities and others has increased somatic complaints from males and females across the country. This study investigated the contributions of stressful life events and gender on somatic complaints in a sample of Nigerian adults. Two hundred and ninety-eight (298) Nigerian adults who were conveniently sampled participated in the study. They comprised one hundred and seventy-five males (175) and one hundred and twenty-three females (123). Participants’ age ranged from 19 years to 53 years with a mean age of 27.13 (SD = 5.96). Two hypotheses were tested in the study. The study used Stressful life events Inventory (LEI) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-15) to collect data for the study. The design of the study was a cross-sectional design and the analysis of data was done using Hierarchical Multiple Regression. Result obtained from the test of the hypotheses indicated that stressful life (β = .32, p< .001) significantly predict somatic complain while gender (β = .05, p> .05) did not significantly predict somatic complain. The study concludes that conditions that threaten the capabilities of a person may lead to disturbances in the biologic system that leads them to somatization. It is recommended that stressful experience and should be managed as a stress disorder.