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. 2020 Nov 12;15(11):e0242160.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242160. eCollection 2020.

Attitude and help-seeking behavior of the community towards mental health problems

Yonas Tesfaye  1 , Liyew Agenagnew  1 , Gudina Terefe Tucho  2 , Susan Anand  3 , Zewdie Birhanu  4 , Gutema Ahmed  1 , Masrie Getenet  5 , Kiddus Yitbarek  6
Affiliations

Attitude and help-seeking behavior of the community towards mental health problems

Yonas Tesfaye et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Community attitude towards mental health problems and help-seeking behavior plays a major role in designing effective community based mental health interventions. This study aimed to assess the attitude, help-seeking behavior, and associated factors of the Jimma zone community towards mental health and mental health problems.

Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study design was employed. A respondent from each of the 423 systematically selected households was interviewed using a pretested, structured, and interviewer-administered questionnaire. Accordingly, a community's attitude towards mental health problems was measured by the adapted version of the "Community Attitude towards Mentally Ill questionnaire (CAMI)" and help-seeking behavior was measured by a general help-seeking questionnaire. Data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 23.0 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was done to determine the independent predictors of the outcome variable.

Results: Among the total 420 study participants (197,46.9%) of them had an overall unfavorable attitude towards mental illness. The majority (153,36.4%) of the study participants agreed on avoidance of anyone who has mental health problems and (150,35.7%) participants described marrying a person with a mental health problem or recovered from the problem is foolishness. Moreover, regression analysis showed family monthly income (AOR = 0.24, 95%CI:0.06-0.91) and occupational status (AOR = 0.57, 95%CI:0.34-0.96) were found to be the predictors of community attitude towards mental health problems. The study finding also revealed a significant number of the respondents preferred non- medical treatment approaches.

Conclusion: Almost half of the respondents had an unfavorable attitude towards mental health problems and the traditional and religious help-seeking intention was high. This suggests the need for designing effective community based mental health interventions to improve the general public attitude and help-seeking behavior towards mental health problems.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Attitude of community towards mental health problems.
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