Health Seeking Behavior among Psychiatric Patients Attending Psychiatry OPD of a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Background: Psychiatric illness is a mental disorder or mental illness which is defined as mental or behavior pattern that causes either suffering or poor ability to function in ordinary life. Such features may be persistent, relapsing & remitting or occur as single episode. Typically social norms & religious or cultural beliefs are excluded. Causes of psychiatric illness are unclear. Mental or psychiatric disorders are usually defined by combination of how a person feels acts, thinks or perceives. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of health seeking behavior among psychiatric patients. Methodology: Study Design:Cross-sectional study.  Setting:Sheikh Zayed Medical College/Hospital RYK (Psychiatric Ward and OPD)Duration:A period of Three months from 15^th February  to  15^thMay 2017.  A predesigned and pre-tested questionnaire was used for data collection.Subjects of study were all the patients who were suffering from Psychiatric illness between 18-65 years of age and of either sex.A total of 58 consecutive patients were included in the study.Data was entered & analyzed by using SPSS 16.  Results: There were total 58 subjects included in study. 64% patients were males and 36% were females. Among them, 41.4% of the patients have depression, 19% have epilepsy, 17.2% have anxiety, 12.1 % have schizophrenia and 10.3 % have insomnia. Out of those, 56.9% of the patients went to spiritual healer, 20.7% went to psychiatrist, 13.8% went to physician and 8.8% went to hakim.
Conclusion: This study showed that more than half of the patients with psychiatric illnesses went to spiritual healers as first contact for health care.