Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Objective This study aimed to assess pathways to psychiatric care and factors associated with delayed help-seeking among patients with mental illness in Northern Ethiopia using the WHO Pathway Study Encounter Form.
Design A cross-sectional study design was used.
Setting Data were collected using face-to-face interview from patients with various diagnoses of mental illness attending outpatient treatment at Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Mekelle City, Tigray, Northern Ethiopia.
Participants Participants who came to attend outpatient treatment during the study period were included in the study using consecutive sampling technique.
Outcome measures Pathways to psychiatric care, delayed psychiatric treatment and factors affecting delayed psychiatric treatment.
Results The median duration from problem onset to contact with first care provider was 4 weeks, whereas contact with modern psychiatric services was 52.0 weeks. Study participants who were single (adjusted OR (AOR)=2.91, 95% CI 1.19 to 7.11), divorced (AOR=3.73, 95% CI 1.33 to 10.49) and who perceived mental illness as shameful (AOR=3.29, 95% CI 1.15 to 9.41) had delayed treatment-seeking behaviour, whereas participants with no history of substance use (AOR=0.43, 95% CI 0.20 to 0.92) were less likely to have delayed treatment-seeking behaviour.
Conclusions There is significant delay in seeking modern psychiatric treatment. Religious healers were the first source of help for mental illness. Majority of the respondents described that mental illness was due to supernatural causes. Stigma and lack of awareness about where treatment is available were barriers to seeking appropriate care.
- pathway
- psychiatric care
- delayed treatment
- mental illness
- help-seeking
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors ST designed the study and was involved in the data collection, analysis and write-up. HK and HH were involved in the design and data analysis and drafted the manuscript. MA participated in the design of the study and analysis of data and critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval Ethical clearance was obtained from the College of Medicine and Health Science’s Institutional Research Review Board (IRB) of Jimma University. Written informed consent was obtained from study participants, confirming willingness to participate after explaining the objective of the study. The information provided by each respondent was kept confidential.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement Data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author (email: habtaishk@gmail.com).