Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Junior Resident, Department of Community Medicine, R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Indian J Public Health. 2017 Jul-Sep;61(3):169-173. doi: 10.4103/ijph.IJPH_155_17.
The discourse of mental health is getting its due attention after all these years in India. A major threat to the mental health system is the demand side factors, namely, knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of the general population toward this. In spite of growing concern regarding mental health in India, this kind of study to assess the mental health status has been very few in India, more so in West Bengal.
With this background, this study was carried out with the objectives to validate the Community Attitude to Mental Illness (CAMI), to assess the different sociodemographic factors among the study population, to assess the KAP regarding mental illness among the study population.
It was an observational, descriptive study with cross-sectional design done at Amdanga Community Development Block, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India, in 2015-16. Questionnaire validation to assess the KAP was the primary objective with obtaining the descriptive data were the second one. CAMI questionnaire was used which was validated for the given area by validation methods such as Cronbach's alpha and structural equation modeling. The resultant questionnaire was used in the field on adult population after a single-stage survey design to collect 730 samples.
The test statistics showed that the questionnaire was reasonably valid after a few tweakings. SEM identified well-define domains in the attitude part. 94.9% says that they are willing to live with a people with mental illness. 14.9% has actually done so. Health-care seeking behavior shows that 19.2% will go to a GP in case of any mental illness. Furthermore, attitude toward mental illness showed mixed picture as also knowledge. This study correlated with various studies of developing countries and it was seen that these population showed markedly different attitudes for probability of the patients getting cured than many other countries. Furthermore, stigma was gradually decreasing, as evident from various other studies.
This study will provide valuable insights into the cognitive and affective aspect of mental illness among these population and thus help in implementing better policies in this regard, as this is fast becoming the talk of the day.
在印度，心理健康领域多年来一直备受关注。对心理健康系统的主要威胁来自需求方因素，即普通民众对心理健康的知识、态度和实践（KAP）。尽管印度对心理健康的关注日益增加，但这种评估心理健康状况的研究在印度却很少见，在西孟加拉邦更是如此。
基于此背景，本研究旨在验证社区对精神疾病的态度（CAMI），评估研究人群的不同社会人口学因素，并评估研究人群对精神疾病的 KAP。
这是一项在印度西孟加拉邦北 24 帕尔干纳的 Amdanga 社区发展区进行的观察性、描述性、横断面研究。2015-2016 年，问卷调查评估 KAP 是主要目标，获取描述性数据是次要目标。使用的是经过验证的适用于该地区的 CAMI 问卷，验证方法包括 Cronbach's alpha 和结构方程建模。经过一次单阶段调查设计，该问卷在成年人群中进行了调查，共收集了 730 个样本。
测试统计数据显示，问卷经过一些调整后具有相当的有效性。结构方程模型确定了态度部分的明确领域。94.9%的人表示愿意与精神疾病患者生活在一起。实际上有 14.9%的人这样做过。在寻求医疗保健方面，有 19.2%的人在出现任何精神疾病时会去看全科医生。此外，对精神疾病的态度和知识一样，显示出复杂的情况。本研究与发展中国家的各种研究相关联，结果表明，这些人群对患者康复的可能性的态度与许多其他国家明显不同。此外，从其他各种研究中可以看出，污名化正在逐渐减少。
本研究将为这些人群对精神疾病的认知和情感方面提供有价值的见解，并有助于在这方面制定更好的政策，因为这是当今的热门话题。
