Community Understanding, Perception and Attitude towards Mental Illness among Residents of Enugu North Senatorial District, Nigeria (original) (raw)

Mentally-ill patients struggle not only from the symptoms and disabilities of the disease but also the challenges from the stereotypes and prejudice that result from the misconceptions about mental illness. The general objective of this study was to assess peoples' understanding, perception and attitude towards mental illness in Enugu North Senatorial District, Nigeria. The study was cross-sectional by design, and conducted in Enugu North Senatorial District, Nigeria, from May to August 2016. Data were collected by 36-item structured, interviewer-administered questionnaires and analyzed using the IBM SPSS for Windows, Version 20.0. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized with p-value ≤ 0.05 considered statistically significant. Majority of the respondents had poor understanding (53.7%), wrong perception (55.3%), and bad attitudes (57.3%) towards mentally-ill patients. More males (49.6%) had good attitudes than females (37.6%) (χ 2 = 4.02; df = 1; P = 0.045). There was a positive correlation between perception and attitude (r = 0.262; P < 0.001). Majority of the respondents chose orthodox medicine (33.6%) or its combination with traditional medicine (32.3%) as preferred treatments. In conclusion, the people of Enugu North Senatorial District in Southeastern Nigeria had a fair understanding of the causes of mental illness, but poor perception and attitudes towards the mentally ill.