ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES TOWAEDS MENTAL ILLNESS AND CARE AMONG RESIDENT OF CELL B ISHAKAMUNIPALITY

ABSTRACT

The literature on mental illness demonstrates poor knowledge of mental illness among

the general population and also indicates that people often have stigmatizing attitudes

towards mental illness.

A descriptive cross-sectional study and quantitative approaches were employed in data

collection and 67 respondents were involved both males and females who were selected

using simple random sampling method.

The results indicated that generally knowledge on mental illness was poor although

majority of the respondents (67%) knew the meaning of mental illness. 58.2% didn’t

know examples of mental disorders, 38.8% attributed mental illness to witchcraft and

40.3% would seek treatment from a traditional healer. Attitudes towards mentally ill

people were very poor as 55.2% agreed that they cannot associate with a mentally ill

person and 49.2% expressed fear for mentally ill people. Results about the care for

mentally ill indicated that 54% cannot take a mentally ill person to hospital but 48.4%

of these would instead take a mentally ill person to a traditional healer.

The recommendation is that basic mental health awareness programs should be

implemented for general public especially newly school going children and youth to

improve the knowledge and understanding and attitudes to reduce fear and negative

perceptions and attitudes in order to enhance positive patient experiences and improve

the care for mentally ill people.