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Prof. Lukoye Atwoli is currently on sabbatical leave from the department of Mental Health at the School of Medicine, serving as Professor of Psychiatry and Dean of the Medical College East Africa, Aga Khan University.

Prof. Atwoli is also a social and health rights advocate and has influenced and participated in the development of numerous policies and programmes in Kenya. He currently serves as the President-Elect of the African College of NeuroPsychopharmacology (AfCNP) and is the Secretary-General of the African Association of Psychiatrists. He has served on the Kenyan Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board as well on several advisory boards nationally and internationally.

Prof. Atwoli is the Chairperson of the Board of the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital, the premier mental health referral Hospital in Kenya.

Prof. Atwoli also writes a weekly column in the Sunday Nation (https://www.nation.co.ke/authors/1959272-1951794-mvlhjwz/index.html) through which he dissects social issues in Kenya and beyond.

Research interests in: Trauma and PTSD; Genetics of Mental Disorders; and Student mental health.

Scholarly works may be found on Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&authuser=1&user=kdonq8MAAAAJ), Researchgate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lukoye_Atwoli) and Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com/profiles/lukoye-atwoli/)

Achievements:

Steered Moi University School of Medicine in developing 16 postgraduate and revising four undergraduate curricula, as well as digitizing content to ease access for the learners
Led the shift of focus of the Moi University School of Medicine towards more graduate studies and research, in an endeavour to become a leading research medical school in Africa
Leading and participating in numerous mental health research efforts, including the NeuroGAP-Psychosis project, the World Mental Health Surveys Initiative, the OSCAR project, and IeDEA

Participated in the development of various national policies, including:

Kenya's Mental Health Policy
National Disaster Management Policy
National Policy on internal displacement
Policy framework for a National Values System for Kenya

Recent Publications

Takahashi R, Wilunda C, Magutah K, Mwaura-Tenambergen W, Atwoli L, Perngparn U. {Evaluation of alcohol screening and community-based brief interventions in rural western Kenya: A quasi-experimental study}. Alcohol and Alcoholism. 2018;53.Abstract

© The Author 2017. Medical Council on Alcohol and Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Aims: To assess the effectiveness of community-based alcohol brief interventions (ABI) implemented by community-health workers with and without motivational talks (MT) by former drinkers, in reducing harmful and hazardous alcohol consumption.Methods: We conducted a three-arm quasi-experimental study (one control and two intervention groups) between May and December 2015 in Kakamega County, Kenya. Participants were hazardous or harmful alcohol drinkers with an Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) score of 8-19 at baseline. One intervention group received only ABI while the other received ABI + MT. The interventions' effects on AUDIT scores were analysed using linear mixed models. Logistic regression was used to analyse the interventions' effects on low-risk drinking (AUDIT score {\textless} 8) after 6 months.Results: The study included 161 participants: 52 in the control group, 52 in the only ABI group and 57 in the ABI + MT group. The mean AUDIT scores were lower in the intervention groups at 1, 3 and 6 months post-intervention; the ABI + MT group showed a greater reduction. The mean AUDIT scores over a 6-month period were lower in both intervention groups compared with the control group. The odds of low-risk drinking were almost two times higher in both intervention groups than in the control group, although the effect of only ABI on low-risk drinking was not significant.Conclusions: ABI + MT and only ABI were associated with a reduced mean AUDIT score among hazardous and high-risk drinkers in this resource-limited setting. ABI + MT was also associated with low-risk drinking in this population.Short summary: Community-based alcohol brief interventions implemented by community-health workers accompanied by motivational talks by former drinkers were associated with reduced hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption in a rural setting in western Kenya.

Degenhardt L, Glantz M, Evans-Lacko S, Sadikova E, Sampson N, Thornicroft G, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Al-Hamzawi A, Alonso J, {Helena Andrade} L. {Estimating treatment coverage for people with substance use disorders: an analysis of data from the World Mental Health Surveys}. World Psychiatry. 2017;16.Abstract

© 2017 World Psychiatric Association Substance use is a major cause of disability globally. This has been recognized in the recent United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in which treatment coverage for substance use disorders is identified as one of the indicators. There have been no estimates of this treatment coverage cross-nationally, making it difficult to know what is the baseline for that SDG target. Here we report data from the World Health Organization (WHO)'s World Mental Health Surveys (WMHS), based on representative community household surveys in 26 countries. We assessed the 12-month prevalence of substance use disorders (alcohol or drug abuse/dependence); the proportion of people with these disorders who were aware that they needed treatment and who wished to receive care; the proportion of those seeking care who received it; and the proportion of such treatment that met minimal standards for treatment quality (“minimally adequate treatment”). Among the 70,880 participants, 2.6{%} met 12-month criteria for substance use disorders; the prevalence was higher in upper-middle income (3.3{%}) than in high-income (2.6{%}) and low/lower-middle income (2.0{%}) countries. Overall, 39.1{%} of those with 12-month substance use disorders recognized a treatment need; this recognition was more common in high-income (43.1{%}) than in upper-middle (35.6{%}) and low/lower-middle income (31.5{%}) countries. Among those who recognized treatment need, 61.3{%} made at least one visit to a service provider, and 29.5{%} of the latter received minimally adequate treatment exposure (35.3{%} in high, 20.3{%} in upper-middle, and 8.6{%} in low/lower-middle income countries). Overall, only 7.1{%} of those with past-year substance use disorders received minimally adequate treatment: 10.3{%} in high income, 4.3{%} in upper-middle income and 1.0{%} in low/lower-middle income countries. These data suggest that only a small minority of people with substance use disorders receive even minimally adequate treatment. At least three barriers are involved: awareness/perceived treatment need, accessing treatment once a need is recognized, and compliance (on the part of both provider and client) to obtain adequate treatment. Various factors are likely to be involved in each of these three barriers, all of which need to be addressed to improve treatment coverage of substance use disorders. These data provide a baseline for the global monitoring of progress of treatment coverage for these disorders as an indicator within the SDGs.

Fayyad J, Sampson NA, Hwang I, Adamowski T, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Al-Hamzawi A, Andrade LHSG, Borges G, de Girolamo G, Florescu S. {The descriptive epidemiology of DSM-IV Adult ADHD in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys}. ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders. 2017;9.Abstract

© 2016, Springer-Verlag Wien. We previously reported on the cross-national epidemiology of ADHD from the first 10 countries in the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys. The current report expands those previous findings to the 20 nationally or regionally representative WMH surveys that have now collected data on adult ADHD. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) was administered to 26,744 respondents in these surveys in high-, upper-middle-, and low-/lower-middle-income countries (68.5{%} mean response rate). Current DSM-IV/CIDI adult ADHD prevalence averaged 2.8{%} across surveys and was higher in high (3.6{%})- and upper-middle (3.0{%})- than low-/lower-middle (1.4{%})-income countries. Conditional prevalence of current ADHD averaged 57.0{%} among childhood cases and 41.1{%} among childhood subthreshold cases. Adult ADHD was significantly related to being male, previously married, and low education. Adult ADHD was highly comorbid with DSM-IV/CIDI anxiety, mood, behavior, and substance disorders and significantly associated with role impairments (days out of role, impaired cognition, and social interactions) when controlling for comorbidities. Treatment seeking was low in all countries and targeted largely to comorbid conditions rather than to ADHD. These results show that adult ADHD is prevalent, seriously impairing, and highly comorbid but vastly under-recognized and undertreated across countries and cultures.

Lukoye Atwoli

Associate Professor of Psychiatry

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Recent Publications

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