Browsing by Author "Gerald Mwesige"

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    Assessment of knowledge and attitudes towards Mental illness and care among residents of Cell B Ishaka Municipality
    (Kampala International University, School of Health Sciences, 2017-04) Gerald Mwesige
    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.