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Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems has a remarkable impact on the attitude, the help-seeking path, and prevention of stigma and discrimination against patients with mental health problems. It is also the cornerstone for designing evidence-based community mental h...

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Autores principales: Tesfaye, Yonas, Agenagnew, Liyew, Anand, Susan, Tucho, Gudina Terefe, Birhanu, Zewdie, Ahmed, Gutema, Getnet, Masrie, Yitbarek, Kiddus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278586/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34261532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00607-5
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author Tesfaye, Yonas
Agenagnew, Liyew
Anand, Susan
Tucho, Gudina Terefe
Birhanu, Zewdie
Ahmed, Gutema
Getnet, Masrie
Yitbarek, Kiddus
author_facet Tesfaye, Yonas
Agenagnew, Liyew
Anand, Susan
Tucho, Gudina Terefe
Birhanu, Zewdie
Ahmed, Gutema
Getnet, Masrie
Yitbarek, Kiddus
author_sort Tesfaye, Yonas
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems has a remarkable impact on the attitude, the help-seeking path, and prevention of stigma and discrimination against patients with mental health problems. It is also the cornerstone for designing evidence-based community mental health interventions. However, the evidence is scarce in developing countries like Ethiopia. This study aimed to assess the knowledge regarding mental health problems and associated factors among communities of Jimma Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in the Jimma zone from March 1 to 22, 2020. A structured, pretested, and interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 420 study participants selected through a systematic sampling technique. The knowledge about mental health was measured by the adapted version of the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule tool. Data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 23.0 for analysis. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was done, and p-value < 0.05 and 95% CI were used to determine the predictors of the outcome variable. RESULTS: The overall knowledge score showed (188, 44.8%) of the respondents had inadequate knowledge. Moreover, (75, 17.9%) of the respondents reported psychiatric disorders are contagious, and (138, 32.9%) mentioned leaving alone is the treatment for mental illness. Talking or laughing alone and showing strange or unusual behaviors were described as symptoms of mental illness by the majority (407, 96.9%) and (403, 96.0%) of respondents, respectively. Brain dysfunction was attributed to the cause of mental illness by most (390, 92.9%) of the study participants. Similarly, the percentage of responses that attributed the causes of mental illness to possession by an evil spirit, God’s punishment, and witchcraft were significantly high (368, 87.6%), (321, 76.4%) and (259, 67.1%), respectively. Furthermore, regression analysis showed that respondents who were able to read and write were 64% less likely to have adequate knowledge than those in secondary school and above educational status (AOR = 0.34, 95% CI (0.16–0.69)). CONCLUSION: Knowledge of mental illness among the general public was relatively poor and higher levels of education were associated with good knowledge of mental health problems; this suggests the need for due emphasis on public education to improve the mental health literacy status of the community. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-021-00607-5.
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spelling pubmed-82785862021-07-14 Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study Tesfaye, Yonas Agenagnew, Liyew Anand, Susan Tucho, Gudina Terefe Birhanu, Zewdie Ahmed, Gutema Getnet, Masrie Yitbarek, Kiddus BMC Psychol Research BACKGROUND: Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems has a remarkable impact on the attitude, the help-seeking path, and prevention of stigma and discrimination against patients with mental health problems. It is also the cornerstone for designing evidence-based community mental health interventions. However, the evidence is scarce in developing countries like Ethiopia. This study aimed to assess the knowledge regarding mental health problems and associated factors among communities of Jimma Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in the Jimma zone from March 1 to 22, 2020. A structured, pretested, and interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 420 study participants selected through a systematic sampling technique. The knowledge about mental health was measured by the adapted version of the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule tool. Data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 23.0 for analysis. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was done, and p-value < 0.05 and 95% CI were used to determine the predictors of the outcome variable. RESULTS: The overall knowledge score showed (188, 44.8%) of the respondents had inadequate knowledge. Moreover, (75, 17.9%) of the respondents reported psychiatric disorders are contagious, and (138, 32.9%) mentioned leaving alone is the treatment for mental illness. Talking or laughing alone and showing strange or unusual behaviors were described as symptoms of mental illness by the majority (407, 96.9%) and (403, 96.0%) of respondents, respectively. Brain dysfunction was attributed to the cause of mental illness by most (390, 92.9%) of the study participants. Similarly, the percentage of responses that attributed the causes of mental illness to possession by an evil spirit, God’s punishment, and witchcraft were significantly high (368, 87.6%), (321, 76.4%) and (259, 67.1%), respectively. Furthermore, regression analysis showed that respondents who were able to read and write were 64% less likely to have adequate knowledge than those in secondary school and above educational status (AOR = 0.34, 95% CI (0.16–0.69)). CONCLUSION: Knowledge of mental illness among the general public was relatively poor and higher levels of education were associated with good knowledge of mental health problems; this suggests the need for due emphasis on public education to improve the mental health literacy status of the community. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-021-00607-5. BioMed Central 2021-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8278586/ /pubmed/34261532 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00607-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Tesfaye, Yonas
Agenagnew, Liyew
Anand, Susan
Tucho, Gudina Terefe
Birhanu, Zewdie
Ahmed, Gutema
Getnet, Masrie
Yitbarek, Kiddus
Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title_full Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title_short Knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
title_sort knowledge of the community regarding mental health problems: a cross-sectional study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278586/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34261532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00607-5
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