Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Mar 24:28:1661.
doi: 10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v28i0.1661. eCollection 2022.

Community mental health literacy in Tshwane region 1: A quantitative study

Dumisile Madlala  1 , Pierre M Joubert  2 , Andries Masenge  3
Affiliations

Community mental health literacy in Tshwane region 1: A quantitative study

Dumisile Madlala et al. S Afr J Psychiatr. .

Abstract

Background: Although mental health literacy is a major determining factor of mental health outcomes and functional capacity of individuals, there is dearth of research on the issue in South Africa.

Aim: To assess the literacy of three mental disorders, namely major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and to compare the resultant assumed literacy level between urban and townships participants.

Setting: Five clinics of region 1 in Tshwane, South Africa.

Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed between November 2019 and January 2020. A total of 385 questionnaires were distributed equally in all five clinics. By means of questions about three fictive cases with clinical pictures indicative of MDD, schizophrenia and GAD the following were assessed: recognising a mental disorder, identifying the cause and knowledge about what would help best.

Results: The majority of participants (67.3%) recognised the clinical picture indicative of schizophrenia as a mental disorder, almost half of the participants (49.9%) recognised the clinical picture indicative of MDD as a mental disorder, whilst just more than one third (36.3%) of participants recognised the clinical picture GAD as a mental disorder. Concerning the causes for the clinical pictures, most participants indicated that stress was the cause for MDD and GAD (77.4% and 68.1%, respectively), whilst indicating that biological or psychological (59.5%) causes are relevant to the clinical picture indicative of schizophrenia symptoms. Fewer participants indicated supernatural causes for any of the clinical case (MDD: 2.6%; schizophrenia 15.3%; GAD 4.2%). Most participants chose professional help as the best option for all three cases (MDD 81.3%, schizophrenia 82.2%, GAD 66.1%). The indicators for health literacy in this study show that urban participants had better knowledge than township participants across all questions about the cases.

Conclusion: Overall, the study indicated a variable knowledge regarding the three mental disorders in region 1 of Tshwane and variable literacy levels in townships compared with urban settings. The results indicate that awareness campaigns should focus on the deficient areas.

Keywords: GAD; community; depression; mental health; mental health literacy; schizophrenia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. World Health Organization . Investing in mental health. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2003.
    1. Jorm AF, Korten AE, Jacomb PA, Christensen H, Rodgers B, Pollit P. Mental health literacy: A survey of the public’s ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about effectiveness of treatment. MJA, 1997;166(4):182–186. 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1997.tb140071.x - DOI - PubMed
    1. Coles ME, Ravid A, Gibb B, et al. . Adolescent mental health literacy: Young people’s knowledge of depression and social anxiety disorder. J Adolesc Health. 2016;58:57–62. 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.09.017 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Rusch N, Evans-Lacko S, Henderson C, Flach C, Thornicroft G. Knowledge and attitudes as predictors of intentions to seek help for and disclose mental illness. Psychiatr Serv. 2011;62(6):675–678. 10.1176/ps.62.6.pss6206_0675 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Henderson C, Evans-lacko S, Thornicroft G. Mental illness stigma, help seeking, and public help programmes. Am J Public Health. 2013;103(5):777–780. 10.2105/AJPH.2012.301056 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources