Mental Health and Risk Factors Among Female Sex Workers in Tanzania

49.2% of female sex workers surveyed in Tanzania screened positive for depression, with 40.4% for anxiety and 20.2% for PTSD. The dataset, created by Edwin Ngula Luguku and last updated in April 2026, contains survey results assessing associations between these common mental health conditions and socio-structural risk factors like violence and alcohol use.

Use Cases

• Predicting risk of PTSD based on factors like non-consensual sexual debut and duration since last vaginal sex.
• Analyzing mediation effects of alcohol use on the relationship between non-intimate partner violence and anxiety or PTSD.
• Identifying condition-specific risk factors, such as client volume for anxiety or living with children for PTSD.
• Modeling associations between different forms of violence (e.g., gang rape, non-IPV) and specific mental health outcomes.

Strengths

• Prevalence rates for depression (49.2%), anxiety (40.4%), and PTSD (20.2%) are explicitly reported.
• Data collection used standardized instruments like PHQ-9, GAD-7, and HTQ-17 for measuring mental health conditions.
• Analysis includes mediation and moderation tests, such as for alcohol use and sex work mobility.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is very small at 9.5 KB, indicating a limited scope.

Provenance

Source

Edwin Ngula Luguku via figshare

Collection Method

Survey data collected using standardized questionnaires (PHQ-9, GAD-7, HTQ-17, WHO violence instrument, AUDIT).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-15 17:43:37; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Tanzania