Caroline Birungi

School: Medicine
Department: Psychiatry

Caroline Birungi, MBChB, MMED (PSYCH), PhD student who is investigating risky sexual behavior among patients with severe mental illness and a Lecturer/ Psychiatrist, Department of Psychiatry, College of Health Sciences at Makerere University. She has experience in managing HIV-associated psychiatric disorders in children, adults and the elderly. She is part of the trainers in the HIV stripe inter-professional course which teaches professionals on how to manage HIV patients at their facilities in Uganda. She has 12 years’ experience teaching both under and post-graduate students, conducting research in HIV in Uganda and supervising twelve graduate students’ research at the Department of Psychiatry and at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatics.

She is currently a PhD student and she plans to defend her thesis in 2024, the PhD is being undertaken at Makerere University, College of Health Sciences with support from Medical Research Council. She has so far published three papers and the fourth is under review. This nested study was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC core funding to the Mental Health Project of Medical Research Council (MRC)/Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Uganda Unit under the headship of Professor Eugene Kinyanda through the ‘HIV clinical trials preparedness studies among patients with Severe Mental Illness in HIV endemic Uganda (SMILE Study)’.

 

Research and Publications

  • Factors contributing to vulnerability to risky sexual behaviour in severe mental illness in the Uganda, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-024-00071-7", 2024
  • Victimization in the life of persons with severe mental illness in Uganda: a pluralistic qualitative study, DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-024-05720-4
  • Physical and sexual victimization of persons with severe mental illness seeking care in central and Southwestern Uganda 2023
  • Perceptions of risky sexual behaviour among individuals with severe mental illness in Uganda, December 2022 SCIREA Journal of Sociology, December 2022, DOI:10.54647/sociology84947
  • Prevalence of neuropsychiatric adverse events and associated factors among adult patients on dolutegravir attending Mulago ISS clinic 2022
  • The risk of hyperglycemia associated with the use of dolutegravir among adults living with HIV in Kampala, Uganda: A case-control study 2022
  • Prevalence and factors associated with risky sexual behaviors among patients with severe mental illness in Uganda: a descriptive cross-sectional study, Manuscript ID OJPSYCH 1420707, 2022.
  • Prevalence and factors associated with depressive illness in patients with tuberculosis in Mulago hospital, Kampala- Uganda: A cross-sectional study, 2021
  • Substance use among HIV infected Published, 2021 Feb;33(2): 137-147.doi: 10.1080/09540121.2020.1717419. Epub 2020 Jan 31."
  • Prevalence, risk factors and association with negative outcomes among adolescents in Uganda:",.11.2016- Published in the International Journal of HIV/AIDS and Research (IJHR) ISSN 2379-1586 is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, (A Comparative study of the prevalence and factors associated with Depression among the elderly with HIV).