Knowledge of and Attitudes Towards Mental Illness Among ASHA and Anganwadi Workers in Vadodara District, Gujarat State, India
Faculty Advisor
Xiaoduo Fan, MDDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2019-06-01Keywords
Community health workersIndia
Mental health
Community Health and Preventive Medicine
Medical Education
Psychiatry
Psychiatry and Psychology
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Show full item recordAbstract
Unmet needs in mental health care are high in low and middle-income countries like India. We propose recruiting community health workers (CHWs) to provide mental health services and address the treatment gap, but there is limited data available on the training needs for this potential role. The aim of this study is to help determine what type of formal mental health training and programming could most benefit CHWs in India. This was a cross sectional study design. Self-administered surveys were conducted amongst CHWs in the villages of Vadodara District, Gujarat, India. Statistical analyses included two tailed t-tests using Microsoft Excel 2011. The most common causes for mental illness were attributed to anxiety (61%) and brain disease (61%) followed by stress (45%) and alcohol use disorder (38%). CHWs were dismissive of faith healers ability to treat mental illness (72.9%) showing a strong approval for recommending psychiatric care for the mentally ill (84.4%). Over 50% of participants believed that mentally ill have a lower IQ and that they were unpredictable, but at the same time asserted that people with mental illness can live in the community (80.8%), and recover if given treatment and support (91.8%). Results are promising with CHWs displaying basic knowledge of the etiology and treatment of disease harboring positive attitudes towards psychiatrist's ability to treat mental illness. Future direction should focus on training CHWs towards minimizing stigmatizing views and increasing their knowledge of mental illness in order to scale up mental health services in these low resource communities.Source
Psychiatr Q. 2019 Jun;90(2):303-309. doi: 10.1007/s11126-019-9625-8. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1007/s11126-019-9625-8Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/49334PubMed ID
30690671Notes
Raghu K. Appasani participated in this study as a medical student as part of the Senior Scholars research program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Related Resources
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/s11126-019-9625-8