Authors
Ikwuka, UgoGalbraith, Niall
Manktelow, Ken
Chen-Wilson, Josephine
Oyebode, Femi
Muomah, Rosemary Chizobam
Igboaka, Anulika
Issue Date
2016-07-26
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In sub-Saharan Africa, traditional and faith healers provide competing services alongside biomedical professionals. This may be associated with delays in reaching specialised mental health services, and hence with longer duration of untreated illness. As first line care constitutes a crucial stage in accessing of psychiatric care, investigating pathways to mental healthcare can highlight help-seeking choices. This study explored the pathways to care for mental illness preferred by a non-clinical sample of the population in south-eastern Nigeria. Multistage sampling was used to select participants (N = 706) who completed questionnaires on help-seeking. Results showed a significant preference for biomedical (90.8%) compared to spiritual (57.8%) and traditional (33.2%) pathways. Higher education predicted preference for the biomedical model, while low education was associated with traditional and spiritual pathways. Protestants preferred the spiritual pathway more than did Catholics. The use of biomedical care is potentially undermined by poor mental health infrastructure, a lack of fit between the culture of biomedical care and the deep-seated cultural/religious worldviews of the people, stigma surrounding mental illness, and the likelihood of a social desirability bias in responses. A complementary model of care is proposed.Citation
Ikwuka, U. et al. (2016) ‘Pathways to mental healthcare in south-eastern Nigeria’, Transcultural Psychiatry, 53(5), pp. 574–594. doi: 10.1177/1363461516660903.Publisher
SageJournal
Transcultural PsychiatryPubMed ID
27460986Additional Links
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363461516660903Type
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
1363-4615ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/1363461516660903
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- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
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