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Background: Psychotic disorders contribute to significant morbidity and mortality partly due to the chronicity of the illness and high relapse rates. Delivering psycho-education messages about disease etiology, their signs and symptoms and the benefits of treatment adherence have been shown to improve clinical outcomes among individuals with psychoses. However, little has been done to examine the feasibility and efficacy of this intervention in low resourced settings., Objective: Our primary objective will be to determine the feasibility of recruiting and retaining patients with a first episode psychosis (FEP) and for the secondary objective, we will determine the preliminary efficacy of psycho-education on illness self-management, stigma, adherence to medications and symptom severity., Hypothesis: We hypothesize that (i) we will recruit 70% of eligible participants and accrue a sample size of 80 over 20-weeks, retaining 80% of the sample size for 24 weeks, (ii) the intervention will lead to improvement in clinical outcomes (described above)., Methods: We will recruit 80 adult patients who have been diagnosed with a FEP, received antipsychotic medication at Butabika Hospital and reside within 21km from the Hospital. Trained village health team (VHTs) members will deliver 6 psycho-education sessions to 40 participants and their family members (intervention arm). Participants in the control arm (n = 40) will receive routine care. We will document how feasible it will be to recruit and retain participants over 24 weeks and document the preliminary efficacy of the intervention on illness self-management, stigma, adherence to medications and severity of symptoms., Data Analysis: We will document the proportion of participants who consent and get recruited, the proportion of those who will get retained and reasons for drop out. We will conduct an intention to treat analysis comparing the groups at weeks 4, 12, 24 and assess the effect of the intervention on the clinical outcomes (described above). We will use the Bonferroni approach to correct for multiple comparisons., Trial Registration: Clinical trials.gov registration number: NCT04602585., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction: Hospital based studies for psychotic disorders are scarce in low and middle income countries. This may impact on development of intervention programs., Objective: We aimed to determine the burden of psychotic disorders among first treatment contact patients at the national psychiatric referral hospital in Uganda., Methods: A retrospective patient chart-file review was carried out in March 2019 for all patients presenting to the hospital for the first time in the previous year. Patients were categorised into those with and without psychotic disorders. We collected sociodemographic data on age, gender, occupation, level of education, ethnicity, religion and home district. We determined the one year prevalence of psychotic disorders among first treatment contact patients. Using logistic regression models, we also determined the association between psychotic disorders and various exposure variables among first treatment contact patients., Results: In 2018, 63% (95% CI: 60.2-65.1) of all first time contact patients had a psychosis related diagnosis. Among the patients with psychotic disorders, the median age was 29 years (IQR 24-36). Most of the patients were male (62.8%) and unemployed (63.1%). After adjusting for patients' residence, psychotic disorders were found to be more prevalent among the female gender [OR 1.58 (CI1.46-1.72)] and those of Pentecostal faith [OR 1.25 (CI 1.10-1.42)]., Conclusion: Among first treatment contact patients in Uganda, there is a large burden of psychotic disorders. The burden was more prevalent among females as well as people of Pentecostal faith who seemed to use their church for faith-based healing. Incidence studies are warranted to determine if this phenomenon is replicated at illness onset., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.