ABSTRACT
Background:The International Organization of Physiotherapy in Mental Health claims that physiotherapy in mental health promotes the overall well-being and optimizes the individual. However, there are concerns about the level of knowledge and attitude physiotherapy students possess towards mental health and patients with psychiatric illnesses.
Both the physiotherapist's level of knowledge and attitude toward mental health have a significant impact on the level of care provided to these patients. This study aims to evaluate the attitude and knowledge of physiotherapy students’ about mental health and patients with psychiatric illnesses. Findings from this study will contribute to the body of knowledge on physiotherapy in mental health.
Methods:A total of 174 participants, 110 females (63.2%) and 64 males (36.8%) were involved in this study. Socio-demographic characteristics including gender, age, religious beliefs, geopolitical zone of origin of participants were obtained. The,Mental Health Knowledge Schedule (MAKS) and the Mental Illness Clinicians Attitude Scale Version 4 (MICA-4) were used to evaluate knowledge and attitude components respectively. Descriptive statistics of mean, frequency and standard deviation were used to summarise data and inferential statistics of Pearson’s correlation and Mann-Whitney U test were used toanalyse data obtained. Alpha level was set at 0.05.
Results: The attitude score was 46.68 ± 9.10, while the overall knowledge score was 45.42 ± 4.88. A majority of the respondents; 75.7% possessed sufficient knowledge about psychiatric diseases and mental health. On the respondents' general attitudes, 48.6% had positive attitudeswhereas 51.4% had negative attitudes towards mental health and people with psychiatric illnesses. Females, generally had a positive attitude compared to their male counterparts.
The results showed that the knowledge of the respondents did not significantly correlate with their attitudes (r = 0.170, p = 0.130).
Conclusion: In conclusion, physiotherapy students of the University of Beninhave good level ofknowledge of mental health and about psychiatric illnesses, but a large number of the students have negative attitudes towards the subject.
Keywords: Mental health, Psychiatric illnesses, Attitude, Knowledge and Students
