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[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s12991-020-00261-y.].
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BACKGROUND: About 76% and 85% of people in low and middle-income countries with severe mental illness did not get management because of fear of expected discrimination. Studying the intention to seek help for mental illness will, therefore, help to know their intended plan for help that would have a vital role to access patients with mental illness. Despite this, literature is limited in the area and community-based studies are scarce in Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular concerning help-seeking intention towards mental illness and its associated factors. Therefore, we assessed the pattern of intention to seek help and associated factors for mental illness among residents of Mertule Mariam town that would fill the gap in evidence and serve as baseline information for public health intervention. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted from May to June 2017 at Mertule Mariam town. General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHQ) was used to assess the intention of help sought. Focus group discussion had also been employed to obtain qualitative data. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to obtain a total sample of 964 participants. Data were fed into Epi Info 7 and analyzed using SPSS version 21. The binary logistic regression method was used and an odds ratio with its 95% confidence interval was computed. Variables in multi-variable logistic regression were considered as an independent predictor of help-seeking intention to mental illness if their P value was less than 0.05. RESULT: About 81.5% of respondents had the intent to seek help from healthcare workers. But 44.6% of participants had the intention to seek from traditional healers. Variables that had an association with help-seeking intention were having an idea that mental illness needs treatment (AOR = 3.42, 95% CI 1.1-10.55), age group of 25-34 years (AOR = 1.46, 95% CI 1.02-2.09), mild social support (AOR = 1.85, 95% CI 1.25-2.72), and perceived severity of mental illness. CONCLUSION: Community help-seeking intent for mental health problems was still inadequate. So strengthening to deliver information about mental illness through media like radio and television to advance help-seeking intention of the community was mandatory.
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BACKGROUND: Negative attitude and discriminatory behavior of health professionals constitute a major obstacle in psychiatric care and have been pointed out as a key issue in working with mental illness. Understanding about the attitude of nurses is crucial for quality and holistic care of psychiatric services and essential for the successful integration of mental health into primary health care. However, there is a paucity of study to examine the attitude of primary health care nurses towards severe mental disorder in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the attitude of primary health care nurses and its associated factors towards people with severe mental illness in Addis Ababa. METHODS: Institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted among nurses working at primary health care in Addis Ababa from May to June, 2018. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 634 participants. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used. Data were coded and entered into EPIDATA 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with attitudes of nurses in primary health care. The level of significance was declared at P-value < 0.05 with 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: A total of 610 respondents were included in the study with a response rate of 96.2%. The mean age of participants was 28.6 ± 5.9 (SD) years and the prevalence of negative attitude was 48.2%. Multiple logistic regression models revealed that respondents who have diploma [AOR = 3.09, CI (1.20-7.95)], work experience of < 5 years [AOR = 4.49, CI (2.37-8.49)], respondents who didn't took mh-Gap training [AOR = 4.92, CI (3.05-7.95)] and poor knowledge about mental illness [AOR = 2.84, CI (1.82-4.44) were associated with negative attitude towards people with severe mental illness. CONCLUSION: Nearly half of the participants have negative attitude towards people with severe mental disorders. Therefore, evidence based and contextualized models are warranted to mitigate negative attitudes of primary health care nurses.
