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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Positive people’s perception determines their interaction and provides support to persons with mental health problems in order to express their own emotional problems and seeking care while negative perception results in avoidance, discrimination, stigma, and even low access to health services. OBJECTIVE: To assess the perception towards people with mental health problems, among people who attend Primary Health Care centers (PHCCs) in Baghdad, and to study the association of the level of perception with certain personal attributes. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of Primary Health Care centers (PHCCs) in Baghdad. Five centers from each side of Baghdad City (Karkh and Rusafa).The study was conducted on 400Iraqi adults attended the selected centers, for a period of four months extended from 1stFebruary to the end of May 2019. RESULT: The results revealed that 56.8% of the respondents were with fair perception, 32% with good perception and only a small proportion of the respondents (11.3%) have poor perception towards mental health problems. The educational level of respondents and their occupational status were found to be significantly associated with perception of mental health problems. CONCLUSION: In the current study, a small proportion of the respondents have poor perception towards mental health problems, and regarding the association of perception with different demographic characteristics, the educational level and the occupational status were found to be significantly associated with perception toward mental health problems.  

DOI

10.52573/ipmj.2021.175794

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