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

• Published in: PloS one 2020-11, Vol.15 (11), p.e0242160
• Main Authors: Tesfaye, Yonas, Agenagnew, Liyew, Terefe Tucho, Gudina, Anand, Susan, Birhanu, Zewdie, Ahmed, Gutema, Getenet, Masrie, Yitbarek, Kiddus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Analysis; Attitudes; Biology and Life Sciences; Bivariate analysis; Data collection; Developing countries; Ethiopia; Female; Health facilities; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Health problems; Health services; Help seeking behavior; Households; Humans; LDCs; Likert scale; Male; Medical personnel; Medical treatment; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental disorders; Mental Disorders - epidemiology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Mental health; Mental health care; Mental health services; Middle Aged; Physical Sciences; Population; Professionals; Psychiatry; Public opinion; Public participation; Questionnaires; Regression analysis; Research and Analysis Methods; Rural areas; Sample size; Social Sciences; Social Stigma; Socioeconomic Factors
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242160

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. 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. 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. 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.