Background &
Objective: Mental health needs of a society are ideally met by integration in
primary care . Under the District
Mental Health programme, Surat is the nodal centre for Dang, a tribal region. In order to make
medical care available to the
patients in need, it was vital to train the peripheral
health workers of the region. The aim was to provide
mental health education to the peripheral
health workers of Dang and assess its impact on their
knowledge and
attitude regarding
mental health issues.
Methodology: 150 peripheral
health workers were posted in the Department of
Psychiatry in batches of 20-30 each for a 7-day, extensive, in-house
training . The improvement in
knowledge and
attitude was assessed by a pre-post semi-structured
questionnaire and structured
feedback .
Results: The
training resulted in a significant improvement in scores related to clarification of myths. The
knowledge and
attitude related to
mental health issues improved significantly and the participants reported that they were sensitized by the
training and would identify and refer
patients to the visiting
psychiatrist .
Conclusion: The
training in
mental health could bring about improvement in the
knowledge and
attitude of the peripheral
health workers . However, to what extent does this change reflect in actual practice,
needs to be ascertained.