Wordofa BerhanuBedada TadesseTesfa Shegaw2020-12-272023-11-062020-12-272023-11-062020-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/24358Introduction: Mental distress is a mental or psychological syndrome, which influences thehealth status and treatment effectiveness, getting quality of care in a hospitalized medicalsurgical inpatients. It is more common in hospital setting than community setting population. Objective: To assess the prevalence of mental distress and associated factors amonghospitalized medical surgical adult inpatients in public hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020. Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted with a total of 408 studysubjects from March 1-30, 2020. Systematic random sampling technique was used and data wascollected using interviewer administered questionnaire. Data was collected by trained nursingstudents, collected data was entered into Epi-data 3.1 and export to SPSS version 26 for analysis,and then binary and multiple logistic regression was performed to check the association betweendependent and independent variable. Result: The prevalence of mental distress among hospitalized medical surgical adult inpatientsin public hospitals was 53.1% with (95%CI; 48%, 58%). Variables of being married[AOR=2.67; 95%CI(1.065,6.683)], private employee [AOR=2.21; 95%CI (1.001, 4.900)], dailylaborer [AOR=4.70; 95%CI(1.218,18.215)], rural residence [AOR=1.85; 95%CI(1.047,3.264)],taking alcohol [AOR=1.68; 95%CI(1.025, 2.740)], previous psychiatric illness[AOR=3.40;95%CI(1.078, 10.737)] and comorbidity [AOR=1.93; 95%CI (1.200, 3.094)] were found to be significantly associated with mental distress; while age, sex, ethnicity, religion,educationalstatus, income, smoking, chat, social support, living condition, history of hospitalization, wardadmitted and length of hospital stay were not significantly associated. Conclusion and recommendation: The prevalence of mental distress was high and beingmarried, private employee, daily laborer, residence in rural area, previous history of psychiatric illness, alcohol used and comorbidity disorder were associated with mental distress among hospitalized adult inpatients, there for health care providers should provide special consideration to those group of patients admitted to the hospital.en-USMental distress, hospitalized medical surgical adult inpatients, Addis Ababa.Thesis