Understanding the reasons to avoid seeking mental health professionals: Validation of the MITOS-MENTAL questionnaire in Peru population

Abstract

There is still much resistance, myths, beliefs, and misconceptions regarding the seeking of mental health services for diagnosis and treatment. The objective was to validate an instrument to determine why Peruvian workers would not seek mental health professionals. In an instrumental study, literature was searched, and mental health professionals were asked about the most common reasons for not attending consultations. An expert panel undertook exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), which were applied to a large population. Descriptive and instrumental statistics were used for the data. The 20 experts gave excellent ratings to the initial questions. In the pilot (250 people), it was confirmed that all questions had saturations >0.40. The item modification technique was also performed, eliminating six questions. With the CFA in 1312 respondents, it was seen that the goodness-of-fit indices were not adequate for three questions, then the index modification technique was used, achieving a satisfactory factorial structure model (χ2 = 61.497; df = 9; p < 0.001; RMR = 0.015; TLI = 0.984; CFI = 0.990, and RMSEA = 0.067). A scale of six questions was validated to measure the most important reasons why Peruvian workers do not want to attend mental health consultations.

Keywords: Health professionals; Mental health; Peru; Population; Validation.