Mental health literacy, attitude, and help seeking intention among a particularly vulnerable tribe

Background

Mental health, when compared to physical health and wellbeing, is the most neglected area. The health status of the tribal population is in pitiable condition and is heavily influenced by its socio-cultural factors and poor health care delivery system. The study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, mental help seeking intention for common mental health problems and factors associated with the study variables among the tribal population.

Method

ology: House-to-house survey was done between January to April 2022. Data was collected using standardized tools like Mental Health Knowledge Questionnaire (MHKQ), Community Attitude towards Mentally Ill scale (CAMIS), and Mental Help Seeking Intention scale (MHSIS).

Results

Only six participants out of 400 reported that they are aware of someone in their community suffering from mental health problems. The majority (80 %) of the participants had fairly good knowledge regarding mental health, and 68 % of them had a favorable attitude towards mentally ill. It was also found that 79.2 % of the participants hold favorable attitude with an OR = 1.40 (0.50,3.90) suggesting that there is a statistically difference in the odds of favorable attitude being present among illiterate people (p = 0.003). When comparing the odds ratio between the groups, keeping females as reference for comparison, it is evident that males OR = 0.44 (0.21,0.94) are less likely to have good knowledge. Moderately strong (statistically significant at p = .05) relationship was seen between the subscales of attitude towards mentally ill and knowledge regarding mental health among the Koraga population.

Conclusion

It has been found that awareness regarding common mental disorders is increasing among the tribals, but it is not accompanied by a favorable attitude. The study concluded that interventional research is needed to reduce the stigma and the treatment gap in mental illness.