Facilitators and barriers to mental health seeking intentions among students at Mulungushi university-Kabwe district.
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Date
2023
Authors
Milanzi, Jamia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Zambia
Abstract
Background: Mental disorders are common among university students, however most students are reluctant to use available mental health services such as student counselling services. Substantial amount of literature suggest that delayed treatment negatively impacts academic performance and life in general. At Mulungushi University 17 cases of mental disorders were recorded among students in the past five years and the proportion of students seeking counselling dropped to 6.8% in 2018 and 5.4% in 2020.Further, one student dropped out of school due to a mental disorder. This study aimed at determining the mental health seeking intentions, facilitators and barriers to mental health seeking intentions among students at Mulungushi University.
Methodology: An analytical cross sectional quantitative design was used with the help of a self-administered questionnaire adapted from 5 validated tools namely; General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ), Mental Health Knowledge Schedule(MHKS), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support(MSPSS), Perception of stigmatization of others for seeking help scale (PSOSH) and Barriers to Access Care Evaluation (BACE-3). 137 Nursing and Pharmacy students were randomly selected after meeting the inclusion criteria. Informed consent to participate in the study was obtained from the respondents. Data was analysed using version 23 of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Chi Square tests were used to determine the association between variables and Binary Logistic Regression Analysis was used to identify predictors of mental health seeking intentions.
Results: The results of the study showed that mental health seeking intentions were weak, 69% of students indicated that they were unlikely to seek help. Further, university sources of help were the least preferred by students, 60 % of students indicated that they were unlikely to seek help from university-based sources. The study also showed that stigma was associated with poor mental health seeking intentions (OR=3.190, CI=0.8-11.339, P=0.041), students who were perceiving stigma were 3.19 times less likely to seek help than those who were not perceiving stigma. Although barriers to care showed no significant effect at a 5% level of significance, the odds showed that those who were perceiving barriers to access care were 1.41 less likely to seek help compared to those who were not perceiving barriers to access care. (OR=1.418, CI=0.623-3.230, P=0.404). The study also revealed that there was an association between gender and mental health seeking intentions. (OR=0.90, CI=0.3826-2.137, P=0.003), females showed stronger intentions to seek help seeking than males. The examined facilitators were social support and mental health literacy and no significant relationships were observed between mental health literacy, social support and mental health seeking intentions.
Conclusion; Based on these findings, the study recommends that efforts should be channelled towards overcoming stigma and site-specific barriers to access care which are contributing to poor mental health seeking intentions among students. Further, special consideration must be placed on males through these interventions since they showed lower health seeking intentions than females.
Description
Thesis of Master of Science in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing at the University of Zambia.